A TRUE WOMAN'S GIFT.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2208, 15 April 1880, Page 3

A TRUE WOMAN'S GIFT.

[From the ! Freeman's Journal,” Feb. llth.] Nows reached ns this morning of a gift so splendid, munificent, magnificant, imperial so to speak, that we could not trust ourselves to comment upon it or its apportionment even if time and space allowed us. The Baroness Burdett-Coutts. a name which conjures up visions of wealth untold, as well as remembrances of benevolence bounded only by the confines of the earth, has decided upon devoting £500,000, half-a-million sterling—to the amelioration of the condition of the distressed tenantry of Ireland. There is no mistake about it, what the Baroness has been doing for several weeks past eventuates in this princely resolve, which dazzles one with is very mention. Lady Burdett Coutts has had her special correspondents in this country for some time, and the effect of what they saw, heard, and reported to their mistress is a donation before which the ransoms of kings and the splendour of Eastern tales fade into comparative ling thousands of Australia evoked in every Irish heart a thrill of gratitude and thankfulness ; the golden sympathy of the New World called up many a loving recollection of deeds of brotherhood in a byegone time; the £20,000 of Mr James Gordon Bennett startled two hemispheres with its charitable magnitude ; but without lessening our deep and never dying appreciation of each and all of these, the gift of the Baroness Burdett Coutts cannot but be said to ccilpse in the astounding glory of its glittering value all the roll of individual largeness which the annals of the world record or recall. As we have said, we dare not trust ourselves to say a word as to its allocation, even if it were otherwise befitting that wc should do so. With one scratch of her pen the lady has done what all Imperial England’s Government have huxtered over for half a year. In the presence of such an act words of thanks are too weak.