“The Press” In 1865

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30884, 18 October 1965, Page 14

“The Press” In 1865

October 19 GRIEVANCES.—If you offer a London hansom cabby his legal fare he will probably make some disparaging remarks as to your claim to be considered a gentleman. If you give an Irish beggar the single halfpenny he so importunately demands, you will have reason to be convinced that copious and pointed invective is a characteristic of Celtic eloquence. In the same way and on much the same principle if you hear a man loudly complaining of a grievance and set to work to give him relief, so far from being overwhelmed with grati-

tude you will be lucky to escape a considerable amount of abuse. With most Englishmen a grievance is apt to assume the form of a valuable and dearly cherished privilege; and one which they will not allow to be lightly meddled with, even though it be by way of reform. In the course of time and by dint of continual practice the grumbling itself becomes so pleasurable a habit as to overpower all sense of the injury in which it arose. It settles down to a confirmed custom, till a proposal for removing the original cause of complaint is resented as an unwarrantable interference with a prescriptive right.