The Sun.
London, England, 1870-03-29 00:00:00

SUN, LONDON

pollu s, LO cue neglect or tneir nome ctutieg, simply
because men do not Polities are a profession only
to the few; the vast majority merely assert their
principles when the time comes, and leave the result
to those representatives who are chosen to work it
out. That women will become rabid politicians is
an assumption without even presumptive evi-
dence.

TxE Commissioners of the Patriotic Fund have j ust
issued their annual report. It is a document which
is not likely to be very widely read, but which will
well repay perusal. We have, in former articles,
nurated the history of this Fund. Very briefly wo
may state that it was subscribed by the
nation during the Russian war for the relief
of the widows and the orphans of those soldiers,-
sailors, and marines who died in the war or of wounds
and diseases contracted therein. A Royal Commis-
sion was appointed in 1854, in order to carry out
the objects of the Fund, as the terms of the
Commission said, "according to the generous inten-
tions of the donors." In course of time a large por-
tion of the Fund was diverted from its original
object, and among other purposes to which it
was applied was the asylum at Wandsworth
for the teaching of daughters of soldiers and sailors.
We learn from the report just published that this
asylum has cost the respectable sum of £218,073.
There is an endowment for this school of £7,000 a year,
and as only 261 girls were in the establishment on
June 30,1869, each girl cost £26 16s. 5d., a very
large sum for a charity school, as we may see when
we find that at the kindred institution of
the Soldiers Daughters' Home at Hampstead the
cost is only £l9 a head, and at a large
school established by Mrs. Arthur Kinnaird, the cost
is not more than £l4. Costliness is not the only
characteristic of the Wandsworth asylum. It has been
the scene of some very unpleasant disturbances. They
are passed over as highly impossible by the Commis-
sioners, but they admit that they have been
obliged to supersede the lady superintendent
who was accused of divers irregularities
by one of the servants, and this official has
been compelled to refund £l2O which was "de-
ficient." •

We have several times had to call attention to the
extreme harshness with which the Commissioners
have treated applicants for relief at the very time
they were lavishing their money so freely upon
their favourite institution at Wandsworth. The
Commissioners have been moved by these strict ures
to make a defence. The value o fit our readers will be
better able to judge of when we have mentioned one or
two facts. The Commissioners having departed from
the terms of the Commission of 1854 in the manner
we have described, were compelled to obtain in 1866
an act of indemnity from Parliament, and in 1867 a
second act was passed giving them power to use the
Fund in the relief of the widows and the orphans of
soldiers and sailors dying in, or in consequence of,
other wars besides the Russian, and also in cases
where death has occurred merely in the service of
the Crown, and not in battle. This power was
set forth in a second Royal Commission issued
in 1868. But these Acts of Parliament and
this second Commission are studiously kept
out of sight by the Commissioners in making
their apology. They mention only the terms of the
original Commission, which confined the Fund, to
those who were widows and orphans by the Russian
war. Even this evasion will not meet the charge
which we have to make, and which is that
many of the persons for whom the Fund
was originally intended are refused re-
lief, and this without any reason being
assigned. We have mentioned many instances of
such refusal in former articles. We will add another.
There died in the Royal Naval Hospital at S tonehouse,
in April, 1865, a seaman who contracted pulmonary
disease in the Baltic during the Russian War. There
can be no doubt as to the fact. The civil doctor who
saw him said that such a history of the case was
highly probable, and the surgeon of the ship in Which
the seaman served stated that this was actually the fact.
Application was made to the Commissioners of, the
Fund for relief, but they refused it because the civil
physician's certificate did not satisfy them that the
man had died of disease contracted in the war. his
widow obtained and forwarded the certificate of the
surgeon of her husband's ship, but she found that
she was no better off than before. Naval officers
interested themselves in the widow's behalf, but
they fared no better than the widow herself. She
has received no relief up to this time,
and her letters even remain unanswered.
After hearing these facts it is interesting to
know that the Fund, has reached the total of
£1,460,718. Nearly a million and a half sterling,
and yet widows and orphans of soldiers and sailors
who served in the Russian war, and died in consequence
of that service, can obtain no relief ! Will none of
our representatives call the attention of Parliament
to this matter ? We are loth to think that they are
slow to move merely because widows .and orplums
have no votes.