A TRUE WOMAN'S GIFT.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 426, 10 April 1880, Page 11

A TRUE WOMAN'S GIFT.

(Prom the Freeman's Journal, February 11.) News reached us this morning of a gift so splendid, munificent, magnificent, 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, aB 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 its very mention. Lady Burdett- CoUtts has had her special correspondents in th ; s 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 splendors of Pastern tales fade into comparative insignificance. The sterling 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 bygone time ; the £20,000 of Mr. James Gordon Bennett startled two hemispheres with its charitable magnitude ; but, without lessening our deep and neverdying appreciation of each and all of these, the gift of the Baroness Burdett-Coutts cannot but be said to eclipse 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 we should do so. Neither will we -contrast the public spirit of the individual with the spiritlesßness of the State as represented by the Ministry. 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. It will not be a stay but it will be an impetus and an example to each to contribute according to their means. Need we chronicle that the Lady Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts is the youngest daughter of the late Sir Francis Burdett; Bart., M.P., and Sophia, daughter of the late Thomas Coutts, Esq., banker, of London. Her name is a synonym for benevolence. In acknowledgment of having originated and administered the Turkish Compassionate Fund the Cordon of the Medjidie was conferred on the Baroness two years ago by the Sultan !