he ultimate destroyer of its own young, does so in perfect
ignorance of the results about to follow the misplaced affection. The
cravings of the interloper are satisfied to the detriment of its own
offspring; and when the full-fledged recipient of its misplaced bounty no
longer needs its aid, the thankless stranger wings its way on its far-off
course, selfishly careless of the fostering bird that brought it into
life; and this may be looked upon as one of the results generally
attendant upon a blind forgetfulness of _where_ our first endeavours for
the amelioration of the wants of others should be made.

It has ever been the crying sin of the vastly sympathetic to weep for the
miseries of the distant, and blink at the wretchedness their eyes--if not
their hearts--must ache to see. Their charity must have its proper stage,
their sentiments the proper objects,--and their imaginations the
undisturbed right to revel in the supposititious grievances of the far-off
wretched and oppressed. The poor black man! the tortured slave! the
benighted infidel! the debased image of his maker! the sunken bondsman!
These terms must be the "Open sesame" for the breasts from whence spring
bibles, bribes, blankets, glass beads, pocket-combs, tracts, teachers,
missions, and missionaries. Oppression is what they would put down; but
then the oppression must be of "foreign manufacture." Your English,
genuine home-made article, though as superior in strength and endurance as
our own canvas is to the finest fold of gauze-like cambric, is in their
opinion a thing not worth a thought. A half oppressed Caffre is an object
of ten thousand times more sympathy than a wholly oppressed Englishman; a
half-starved Pole the more fitting recipient of the same proportion of
actual bounty to a wholly starving peasant of our own land of law and
liberty.

Let one-tenth the disgusting details so nobly exposed in the _Times_
newspaper, as to the frightful state of some of our legalised poor law
inquisitions, appear as extracts from the columns of a _foreign_ journal,
stating such treatment to exist amongst a foreign population, and mark the
result. Why, the town would teem with meetings and the papers with
speeches. Royal, noble, and honourable chairmen and vice chairmen would
launch out their just anathemas against the heartless despots whose realms
were disgraced by such atrocities. Think, think of the aged poor torn from
their kindred, caged in a prison, refused