LAST VOYAGE OF CAPT. ROSS. 
603 
we should not have deemed ourselves privileged to have entered 
into such a minute discussion of the various events of the 
voyage; nor should we have considered ourselves entitled to 
treat them with that severity, which has called down upon us 
the resentment of his admirers. 
But although the expedition was originally undertaken en¬ 
tirely as an enterprise of a private character, and the govern¬ 
ment of the country not cal led upon to be responsible for any of 
the liabilities incurred, nor to take any notice of the services of 
the individuals engaged in it: yet it was no sooner terminated, 
than the same government paid £4580, to the officers and men, 
and £5000, to the individual, who had undertaken the expedition 
on his own risk and responsibility. The total loss of that in¬ 
dividual, according to his own statement, was only £3000 : 
the whole of his loss was therefore made good to him, and an 
additional £2000, as a bonus for his services Capt. Ross, 
therefore, appears no longer before the public, in his private 
character: the public have paid him for his services, and we, 
as one of that public, possess the right to examine and investi¬ 
gate the merits of those services, for which he has been so 
handsomely remunerated, and to bestow upon them our appro¬ 
bation, or to denounce them as wholly undeserving of the 
money, which the public have paid for them. The actions of 
Capt. Ross, during the last voyage, have become as much public 
property, as those of Parry were, when he sailed under the 
immediate sanction, and at the expence of the government of 
the country, with this difference only, that government agreed 
to purchase the services of Capt. Parry, before any knowledge 
could be derived, if they would really prove worthy of the 
purchase; and the services of Capt. Ross were purchased after 
the full extent and value of them had been ascertained. 
We here take this opportunity of sincerely congratulating the 
country upon the bargain, which it has made, or which has been 
made for it, by those eminent and enlightened men, to whom 
the people have delegated the right of squandering away their 
money (having so great a superfluity of it) on individuals, who 
perhaps possess no other claim upon the nation, than that they 
