University of Virginia Library

TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.''

SIR,—In your kindly notice of my little book on Saturday last you did me an unintentional though an almost deserved injustice. Will you allow me to relieve myself from it without doffing my incognito? You have read a passage on "the Timbuctoo question'' as an expression of that extreme and ignoble Radicalism which would subordinate the honor of the nation to its wealth. Perhaps my incautious anger has left the passage open to that interpretation, but I wish to disclaim it. I revolt from that doctrine as much as you, and if you knew my name you would perhaps recognize one who has publicly and practically striven to refute it.

My mind when I wrote the passage referred to was indignantly

alert to the contrast between the fury, vigor, and sacrifice so quick for such an enterprise as that, and the mournful debility of zeal in the redress of our own home sorrows. I may be "sometimes unjust,'' God knows I wish I were all untrue. Besides, you will allow me to think, as I do, that a little politic management and expenditure might have rescued the Abyssinian captives without an expedition costing £10,000,000. Otherwise, I agree with you that a people unchary of its honor at any sacrifice is fit only to be enslaved by some nobler race.

I am, Sir, ac.,
THE AUTHOR OF "GINX'S BABY.''