The Sun.
London, England, 1870-06-27 00:00:00

THE CHARITY OF CHARLES DICKENS.

In presiding at a meeting of the friends of the Royal
Free Hospital, erected in Gray's Inn-road, Mr. Charles
Dickens made a speech some years since which was never
published. The following is an extract from a report
taken down by a shorthand writer who listened to him :--
"Ladies and gentlemen,—lt happened some years ago,
immediately after the close of the great Crimean war, that
I was walking in the neighbourhood of Blackheath with a
civilian just come home, who had greatly dintinguished
himself in connection with that event. The conversa-
tion naturally turned on the incidents he had lately wit-
nessed, and my companion remarked that the ground
upon which we happened to be standing was sufficiently
like the ground on which one of the most memorable of
the Crimean battles was fought, to give me a very good
idea of the field. " Put behind every one, even of the
least of the furze-bushes on that heath," said he—" put
behind every patch of shelter before us which could
possibly conceal a crouching human form, one—at least
one—wounded soldier, and you will have a very clear
idea of the field, supposing that soldier dead, as I saw it
myself on the morning after the fight." " I suppose,"
said I, " that the badly wounded men crept behind those
bushes when they were struck, to get out of fire ?"
" Well, in part for that reason," he said ; " but I think
only for a very small part, because I have noticed that it
became a kind of instinct in a badly wounded man to
creep away and crawl behind any little bit of shelter, and
crouch, and die alone, like some of the lower animals."
Gentlemen—ladies and gentlemen—that picture impressed
my fancy very much at the time, and since then, when I
have passed through any of the crowded byways of this
vast London, or of any other great town or city, I have
hoped within myself that it may not be in peace as it is
in war, and that many of the stricken among us may not
retire to their miserable places of refuge—may not coil
themselves up in their wretched places of shelter, and
die in the midst of us, untended and alone. Now,
ladies and gentlemen, the most prosperous and best cared
for among men and women know full well that whoever
is hit in this great and continuing battle of life, howsoever
vast the gap may be that is made,, howsoever dear the
companion may be that is down, we must close up the
ranks, and march on, and fight out the fight. But it
happens that the rank and file are many in number, and
the chances against them are many and hard, and they
necessarily die by thousands, when the captains and the
standard-bearers only die by ones and twos. How
those privates live, and how they fight, and, how
they die, are questions of immense moment to the
whole social army. If they were not felt in these later
times—if they were not felt honestly and thoroughly to
be so—there can be no doubt that our own ranks would
contain within themselves the certain elements of swift de-
struction and dissolution, and that we should need no
enemy to ruin us utterly, but our own misdeeds. Accord-
ingly, ladies and gentlemen, and because people in general
are, thank God ! disposed to be humane, and to do right
and to do good, this great capital teams with institutions
for the relief of the indigent sick. They are not, it is
true, by any means equal in number to the dire need—
they are not equal in capacity to the heavy demands
made upon them—but they are great institutions never-
theless, many of them richly endowed, all of them nobly
remarkable for the great medical science and skill which
is freely placed at their command. Now, as I have to
entreat your active-interest in behalf of one of these, it
may be right that I should try, always without deprecia-
tion or the shadow of disparagement of any of the others
to shew in whatits peculiar claims consist. Happily for me,
ladies and gentlemen, the task is an easy one. The distin-
guishing character of the Royal Free Hos-
pital is amply expressed in its simple name.
It is a free hospital —no recommendation
is needed by the suffering creature who seeks admission ;
no letter from a governor or subscriber, or what not, has
with difficulty to be hunted out. " Look at me, look at
me ; I am sick, I am poor, I am helpless, I am forlorn."
Those are the patients' credentials. This is no case of a
Chateau en Espagne—a castle in the air—a hospital
of good intentions that may or may not be
built some day of fragments rescued from the infernal
pavement. There it stands in solid bricks and mortar.
It is as real as the poor suffering creature who lies at your
feet at the door-step as you pass home in the dark.
The means of assuaging the suffering is at hand, if the
public will only supply the requisite funds. There
never was so strong or so hopeful a case. I believe
there are in this great town hundreds of well-disposed
people so struck to the heart by the spectacles which the
streets of this great city present, and still more by the
dreadful spectacles they hide—that they would gladly do
anything to set those things right, if they knew how.
In its extent and its degree this is how. Set up and main-
tain 500 beds, and it is positively certain that five times
5,000 human creatures will have laid their wretched heads
upon them, to recover or to die, within five years. Oh !
ladies and gentlemen, I cannot but think, in speaking of
this hospital to-day, how little the poor need to be done
for them, when all is said and done. I have spoken of 500
beds. hen we talk of beds we think of a well-appointed
and long-established home—we think of a luxurious room,
grown to be an old and dear companion—we think,
perhaps, of a number of pretty rooms, surrounding it,
where we have watched our children sleeping from
their cradles upward. The hospital bed is a poor
little frame cf iron, some four feet wide, in a great
bare ward the patients never saw before—a little space
not much larger than a grave, in a long perspective of un-
rest and pain. But to the body stretched upon that little
bed, come the ready hand, the soothing touch, the know-
ledge that can relieve pain within that suffering body ;
and to the softened mind within it come, at the best time
the words of the Great Friend of the sick in body and
the-sick in spirit, who never raised His hand on earth
except to heal. Ladies and gentlemen, for His
sake remember—for God's sake remember—these are the
things that evoke the gratitude of the sick poor ; these
are the things that do men lasting good—these are the
blessings we can bestow upon them, at so little cost to
ourselves, and by which, after all, we can bridge across
that great gulf between their beds and ours, as we all tend
to that common-road on which we must be equal travel-
lers at last.—Moriling Advertiser.

THE FRANCO-SPANISH TREATY. -- A despatch
from Madrid gives the result of an interpellation from
Senor Rios Rosas on the subject of the famous Franco-
Spanish Treaty. The Minister replied that the treaty in
question had actually been signed, according to the ad-
vice of the State Council, who thought it unnecessary to
have the intervention of the Cortex.