9th Sept. THERE surely must have been some Englishmen in London who felt at least a gentle touch of compunction when they read the following in the Times in July last in an account of a sale in the celebrated auction room of Messrs. Christie, Manson, and Woods The five following lots were sold by order of a descendant of Admiral Lord Collingwood, in whose family they have remained to the present An oval silver soup-tureen, cover, liner, and Stand, with chased band of honeysuckle and twisted serpent handles, by Paul Storr, 24 0z., with presentation inscription to Lord Collingwood from his townsman, at Newcastle, dated 2Ist October, £112 3s. (Cox); the sword presented to Admiral Lord Collingwood by the City of London in 1805, with inscription, set: i ints, England expects every ma to do is duty "—£240 (Morris); and the sword presented to Lord Collingwood by the City of Liverpool—£160 (Morris); and tio swords exptured by Lord Collingwood at Trafalgar, that of Admiral Villeneuve, Commander-in-Chief of the combined fleets of France and Spain, 21st October, 1805 £63 (Spink); and that of Don Baltazar Hidalgo Cisveros, the Spanish Rear-Admiral, 21st October, 1805—£26 5s. (Spink). The sale also included the following:—The sword of Admiral Viscount Nelson, used when a mate, 260 guineas (London); a sword handle, of Indian agate of remarkable purity," inlaid with five large old oriental brilliants, formerly the property of Tippoo Sahib, and taken at the fall of Seringapatam—£260 (J. M. Jones).
It would seem that there must be Englishmen at home who have forgotten that Admiral Collingwood was Nelson's "My dear Coll," who led the lee line at Trafalgar. It seems hardly credible that a descendant of Admiral Collingwood, even if he were starving, could send his two swords!to an auction room, swords teeming with such noble associations to every Briton. And worse than that, the swords of the gallant but unfortunate French and Spanish Admirals who struck their flags at Nelson's attack are with his sent to the same ignominious destination. Our first thought' is that our Government and people must indeed be degenerate to tolerate such de-secretion, Nearly a century ago our grandfathers were fighting for the existence of the British Isles against almost the whole of Europe, and in one of those fights which placed the British navy on the topmost pinnacle of greatness Nelson and Collingwood won these swords which a wretched descendant of one of those grand sailors has sent to s|auction. As one man in whom the spirit that actuated those men is not yet extinct says: "Not an Arab in the desert could be found in the length and breadth of it who would part with the sword of his ancestors not a Malay but would starve and go naked rather than sell the kris his father had won in fight... How is it the Nation did not buy them if they must be sold, and fix them for ever in Greenwich, where the coming officers and seamen could see them and gain courage from thinking of the deeds that gained them?" "'Nelson's sword is one that he wore as a junior officer, but it is still Nelson's, and it is not a pleasant reflection that it should be knocking about in an auction room, or on the dusty shelves ofa dealer in_curiosities. Where was the Navy League? Where were our rich patriots? If Sir Michael Hicks-Beach holds the strings of the public purse so tight that £500 or £1,000 could not be "found to buy these treasures and enshrine them at Greenwich Hospital, there are individual members of the Government, and other public men, who could come to the rescue, Lord Salisbury, Mr. Balfour, Mr. Goschen, Mr. Chamberlain, and hundreds of others are not in such straitened circumstances that they could not have averted this reproach from British parrotism. Are we indeed degenerate? Has prosperity choked the love of adventure and the desire to spread the name and fame of England that made us the possessors of India and a hundred colonies? The whole action of our Government in regard to China looks like it. China has asked for assistance and we have given her advice; the Yangtze Valley asks us to come in and give it a good administration, to help it to reform itself; but we are afraid of the responsibility; our greatness is failing, from craven fear of being great. And the swords of our past heroes are put up for sale in an auction room, with the swords of our old enemies that our past heroes won by their heroism, and in London this seems to pass without comment. This indifference is the more strange in the face of the revived interest in the Navy, and the place that Nelson and his captains
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.