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Globe, Volume VII, Issue 766, 4 December 1876, Page 2

There is an old threadbare adage admonishing all concerned to “ be just “ before being generous.” Our sagacious and hard headed neighbours in Dunedin, we always thought, had long ago kept this in mind with many others of a similar prudent tendency. If so, they seem to have lost sight of it for one moment, and to have permitted, instead, that warmth of feelings hidden somewhere beneath the external crust, to temporarily impel them to riotous expressions of generosity. What all the civilised world just now calls the Turkish atrocities, appear to have had a similar effect upon our Otago friends, no less, in fact, than that of having whisked their hearts in the cavities of their brains, and vice versa. Public meetings at which influential members of the clergy and laity both have excitedly reviewed the Eastern question, have been held, when what superfluous bile the controversy on the Abolition question has left undisturbed, has been freely stirred up in the noble cause of humanity represented by the sufferings of the Bulgarians smitten by the armed hosts of Turkey. The result of this agitation has been, resolutions adopted to collect moneys for the purpose of relieving the distress of the Servian people whom the fortunes of war have so atrociously treated, Of course no

one eould sympathise with those unfortunate people more heartily than we do; at the same time, we cannot help remembering that charity begins at home, or at least should do so. What, for instance, is the state of the various Benevolent Societies of our cities ? In Otago especially they are in a very impecunious position. Here, during the last few years, our charitable institutions have received very large grants out of the current provincial revenue which have sufficed to maintain them, without ratepayers being directly asked or compelled to tax themselves in their support. The new constitutional changes have placed a different complexion upon this state of things. Without referring at all to the Bulgarian question, it is patent that in every centre of population in the colony there exists considerable scope for the exercise of benevolence and charity. Surely the needy ones among us here should not be overlooked for the gain of people of a different race living thousands of miles away, with whom we do not possess the slightest tie. This action of our Dunedin friends has plunged us in a state of pleasurable astonishment. We never thought that in matters of the kind they would not allow any impulses, but those of the brain, to affect their understanding. It reminds us somewhat unpleasantly of those Dorcas meetings at home, when zealous friends of the heathen niggers congregate nightly in order to devise means of clothing the benighted Timbuctoo negroes, while perhaps some of their kind are perishing from want of food or of covering at their very doors.