THE PREMIER'S MANSIONHOUSE SERMON ON FRUGALITY.
LORD JOHN Russam, chose the appropriate occasion of a feast, the other day, for a sermon on frugality, as the duty of the pre- sent hard times. "It is the duty of every master of a household," he says, "to economize as much food as possible." "While the labouring classes and all the poorer orders of society have the greatest difficulty in providing the daily subsistence of themselves
and their families, it is the duty of every master to avoid all waste in his household." How the Mansionhouse must have trembled at the unwonted accents I
Lord John's zeal accounts for a story current among gossips critical of good living. An impression had lately obtained among unexpectedly mortified guests of a Radical turn, that Lord John invidiously kept his good wine for the Bishops. But it now ap- pears that Lord John is bent on frugal virtues generally, and means to mortify the Bishops quite as much as anybody else— more no doubt ; for to be mortified is especially their vocation. Of course, advice from so high a quarter will be rigidly fol- lowed. Mansionhouse feasts will alter their character. The next time Lord John goes East of Temple Bar, he will expect to see nothing on the civic board but mutton chops, flanked perhaps by a frugal display of Patna rice. Aldermen will grow lean on voluntary short allowance. There will still be that for which alone statesmen and aldermen assemble, the well-known "feast of reason and flow of soul"; the grosser feast being a superero- gation which Lord John Russell has dismissed, by precept. and example, to the rank of social vices. It would still further carry out the spirit of this humane abne- gation, if Ministers and citizens, literally contenting themselves with the mental feast, and using their jaws for nothing but speeches, were to invite a hundred or so of poor people into
e Egyptian Hall, and thus feed, as Hindu dignitaries are ac- customed, vicariously. The Indian princes derive inexpressible benefit from the repletion of invited Brahmins ; and, no doubt, the same "principle," as Lord John would say, holds good in London. Depend upon it, either Mayor or Minister would find that no City dinner had ever agreed with him so well as that eaten by another person. And then, too, instead of making a mere show and talk of frugality for the sake of the poor, some real, tangible, and ascertainable benefit, would be conferred.
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