The Sun.
London, England, 1853-04-18 00:00:00

PUBLIC DINN.B.RS,

(From the Times.)
Public dinners are public bores. What man of sub-
stance is there— or, still worse, what man suspected of
substance—who is not pestered at the least two or three
times in every year to give himself a public indigestion
in the cause of charity.? The season is now approaching
when these exhibitions take place, and, ere they are
taken in hand, we would endeavour to discourage them
by all the means in our power. The real fact is, nobody
is benefitted by them but the tavern-keeper. The
various charitable institutions in the names of which
the banquets are spread are absolutely injured by the
system. Funds which, but for the dinners, would
find their way into the treasury of the charity, are in-
tercepted by the till of the tavern, and no one, that
we can discover, except " mine host," is a bit the
better for the arrangement. First let us consider the
subject as torture unnecessarily inflicted upon human
beings. Who does not remember to have been
dragged under the still burning influence of a July
or August sun to some horrid den in the city about
six or half-past six o'clock p.m. ? He goes through
preliminary ceremonies much the same as those he would
be called upon to endure had ho been mad enough to
venture upon a dive into the pit of the Lyceum or Hay-
market at the frame season of the year. Next he finds
himself amidst a crowd of perspiring fellow-sufferers in
black—some with rosettes at their buttonholes, like
Coronation horses, all doing their best to reconcile an
expression of benevolence with that studious avoidance
of fellowship with strangers which is one among the
many amiable characteristics of our countrymen. Then
there is the insane rush upstairs to discover the plate on
which the counterpart of one's voucher is deposited ;
the attempt, of course, is useless. You look around you
for advice, but everybody is in the same condition as
yourself, except one tall stern man, somewhat bald
about the temples, who has realised his number,
and stands sentinel over the position. Come what
may, you daren't ask him. At this moment the
idea of a Hansom and Liberty will flash across the mind,
but you are under the spell, and must see the feast out
whether or no. You rush upstairs among more per-
spiring men, to consult " the plan," and find, theo-
retically speaking, that you are billetted opposite the
stern man; although you could be sworn in any court of
justice in Christendom that you had strained your eyes
in vain to discover your ticket for a hundred plates up
and down on either side of the spot indicated. Finally,
after rushing backwards and forwards between "the plan"
and the stern man half-a-doien times, you find the ticket
on the plate suggested, although it is clear enough that
it must have been deposited there for the first time
during your last absence to consult " the plan."
Well, let us suppose this to be over, and that all
the perspiring revellers are duly placed,- including a
diplomatic-looking member of the Upper House, with a
red riband across his white waistcoat, who is to let off
the great speech of the evening. On either side of the
" chair" are half-a-dozen grandees—one or two of them
excessively dull-looking men—who, as you are informed
in a whisper, are India directors or possess unbounded
influence over the future destinies of the Namur Rail-
road. Then there is a gentleman connected with the
American Mission, who is sure to say something after
dinner about the graves of Milton and Shakspere. But
we have not space to describe all the grandeur. The
dinner is good—or, in the present instance, we will as-
sume it -to be so, although heaps of charity dinners
are detestably bad ; but we wish to take the thing at
the best. Your soul is thirsting for cool streams, not
lusting after fleshpots ; but there is no help for it. Fall
to and eat. Eat and drink—drink and eat. You have
a chance of hearing from your neighbour that it is pub-
licly reported "Her Majesty is doing pretty well after
her confinement," or that " 'Tis very warm in the Royal
Academy about 2 p.m." That is your only intellectual
relaxation until the speaking begins, and then, despite
of yourself, you find yourself swallowing wine by the
bumper and tapping the table under the influence of the
stern man opposite you, who has already mastered pub-
lic opinion in his neighboUrhood, and puts you down
with a glance if you tap a little longer than he deems
consistent with exact propriety. So matters go on for
two or three dreamy hours—but the dreams are bad
dreams—until you escape out of doors into what seems
a furnace cooling down. In two or three days you get
over it ;—and that's the end of a Charity Dinner.
We have purposely omitted all mention of the col-
lection, for that must be considered the very essence of
the whole business, and deserves ampler remark. As
we said before, we have taken a public charity dinner
at its best, and presumed the affair to be a real banquet
as far as gormandizing is concerned. But all this gluttony
in action must be paid for. It is said that but for the
feast there would be no collection, and no tickets bought.
Of course there would be no tickets bought if there
were no feast—no after-dinner collection if there
were no dinner. There would, however, be something
a great deal better in the shape of undiminished
donations and subscriptions to the charity. Grant
that tho gross receipts may be smaller—the net receipts
would certainly be greater, and that is the only ob-
ject in view. Nobody shall ever persuade us that
amidst two or three hundred men of average common
sense who have thus been penned up in heated rooms,
as in a charitable Smithfield, a dozen, could be found
who enjoy the thing for its own sake, who look upon
it as a real festive meeting. Men do not go to such
places to forget the toils of business and the anxieties
of life, for a few hours of friendly intercourse with
their fellow-creatures. No such thing ; they have been
talked into it—baited into it—persecuted into it—and
there they are, and must endure it. They have screwed
their charity up to martyr pitch, and are smiling at the
stake. We cannot, however, dismiss this part of the
subject without noticing the additional engine of pecula-
tion which is brought to bear upon the Queen's poor sub-
jects in connexion with these orgies. An endeavour is
made to force you into what is called the stewardship.
Now, the sole duty of a steward is to pay 41. or 51. in place
of the simple guinea that he would have paid for his ticket
in his private capacity. To such an extent is this system
carried that there has been an instance in which there
have been 200 stewards to 40 guests, This case is much
the same as that of the German Principality towards the
close of the last century, in which the standing army
consisted of a single man ; but there were two field-
marshals, and general officers in proportion, to look
after him, form him into squares, make him deploy, and
what not. It may be asked, why do we exclaim against
a process when .
the result is an additional subscription
to a charitable object We reply, that all the persons
who can fairly be induced to give the 41. or 51. in the
character of the steward would give it any way. As far
as regards the compelled steward, we do not see why
men should be bullied into almsgiving more than
into anything else. Besides, the result is not such
an addition to the funds of the charity as might
have been obtained had the money been paid without
being subject to deduction under the head of tavern bills.
It would be much better to collect the sums subscribed
without any dinner at all, and to gratify any little
vanity that may be at the bottom of the transaction by
publishing the names of subscribers. What more is
gained by the present arrangement? We verily believe
that, in the majority of instances, the whole affair lies
between the secretary and the tavern-keeper. We have
heard of a ease in which the secretary to more than one
of these benevolent institutions has been presented with
a piece of plate, as a public acknowledgment of his
charitable exertions. This is flattering, of course, but it
is remarkable that the landlord of the tavern at which
the greatest number of the feasts was held figures for
the very largest subscription in the list.
We are not writing with the intention of directing our
observations against this or that particular charity.
We would have our remarks understood as applicable
to all charity dinners. But
n it so happens that at the
present moment a contest upon this very subject in the
case of the Literary Fund, is being carried on with consi-
derable violence on both sides. The question for decision
of course is, whether or no it be for the interest of the
" fund" that the dinners should take place. Now, we
do not mean in any way to mix ourselves up with
the facts of the case, but to take the assertions
of the disputants upon their own showing. The
reporter for the managers asserts that the dinner of
1851 cost 1391. ss. 6d. (add singers, 71. 75.) ; and that
of 1852 cost 1461. 145.; and that if to these sums be
added the full share of the printing, stationery, adver-
tising, and incidental expenses, it appears that by the
sale of tickets, the contributions of stewards and other
honorary visitors, and donations directly traceable to
the dinner, exclusive of the Queen's benefaction and
other annual subscriptions, the dinner of 1851 produced
a clear profit of 5181. 2s. 6d., and the dinner of 1852 a
profit of 5571. 16s. ld. The opponents of the
management pull this estimate to pieces, and show
from the published accounts that there must be
gross error in the calculation. They take from
the amounts of the fund each heading separately, and
show how small is the amount over which the dinner can
exercise any possible influence. They tell us that for
years the guinea tickets and the stewards' fees did not
pay the expense, but that there was an annual loss of
from 501. to 601. in consequence of the dinners. Who
may be right or who wrong in this particular instance
we have no means of knowing. We take the chief facts
tossed about in a public controversy, and leave fur-
ther discussion to the persons more immediately con-
cerned. But we are very confident that in the main, in
this instance as in all others, right must be with those
who do not set about making money by wasting it
tavern revelry and unnecessary prodigality.

A FRENCH CAPTAIN JOHNSON.—The Paris police
have just arrested a man, who, under the name of the
Count de Bondy, has been carrying on a curious system
of swindling. He was accustomed to go to tradesmen
who deal chiefly with females, and obtain from them in-
formation respecting such of their customers as were
unmarried, anxious to wed, and possessed of a certain
amount of property. He then contrived to get an intro-
duction to some of the females, and by representing him-
self to have an income of 8,000 f., and, being on the look-
out for a wife, soon persuaded them to receive him
on a footing of familiarity. He afterwards on different
pretexts obtained from them various amounts, and then
he disappeared. One of them was a poor woman, who
only just knew how to sign her name ; and he got her
to sign a bill of exchange, under the belief that it was a
deed by which he made over to her all his property as a
proof of his affection for her. From a small tradesman
in the Rue du Temple, also, he obtained 200 f., on the
pretence that he would give him an interest in a coal-
mine which had just been discovered in the neighbour-
hood of Paris, and which was expected to be extraor-
dinarily profitable.
THE CONDEMNED CONVICTS IN CHESTER CASTLE.—
The wretched women, Honora Gibbons and Bridget
Gerratty, who were sentenced to death by Mr. Justice
Wightman, at the late Chester Assizes, for poisoning a
child of the former's with vitriol, for the purpose of ob-
taining 3/. or 4/. from a burial club, are to be executed
this day week. An attempt is being made to induce
Lord Palmerston to spare Garratty's life. They have
made no confession as yet of the crime,