TO CORRESPONDENTS. 
523 
This question of responsibility is a very interesting erne. We 
should be glad on this, as on several other topics at which we 
have lately glanced, to elicit the opinion of some of our able Cor¬ 
respondents. We have those in our mind’s eye who could throw 
a good deal of light upon it, and who, always actuated by ho¬ 
nourable feeling, would place it in the proper point of view. 
Alluding to Correspondents, we may, perhaps, be permitted 
to observe, that we have heard of strange complaints,—that we 
exact from our friends the postage of those communications 
by which our periodical is fed, and which (and we gratefully ac¬ 
knowledge it) constitutes its chiefest worth. 
Why! we do as all our brother-journalists do; and what we 
must do to a certain extent, or we should be inundated with let¬ 
ters which we should not have time to read, and the expense of 
which would far exceed our little profits. 
We had heard this complaint whispered here and there, and 
« 
we took no little trouble to trace it to its source. And to whom, 
reader, do you think we traced it ? why, to those who have never 
written to us at all; andthat for two good and sufficient reasons,— 
in the first place they could not, and in the next place they dared 
not. 
But, however, we are truly grateful to our Correspondents. 
Our covers contain a list of them of whom we may well be 
proud; and, sometimes, if we must confess the truth, our con¬ 
sciences have given us a twinge or two. While we exultingly 
snatched the communications of our friends Castley and Karkeek 
from the servant, we have thought that it was a shame to make 
such good fellows pay so much: not that they regarded it—we 
know them too well for that. 
Indolence, procrastination, pressure of business, and various 
other things, have prevented us from saying what we have long 
intended to have said on this subject. We cannot admit every 
one to tax us at his pleasure; but when a letter with the ac¬ 
knowledged signature of a Correspondent has once appeared in 
our pages, on a subject of science or practice, he may take it for 
granted that we attach some value to his communications, and 
that we shall be happy to hear from him again without taxing 
