of those who solicit me, and that the love of notoriety, or the gratification of a feeling of self-importance, or a fussy restlessness, or the craving for preferment is frequently quite as powerful an incentive of their activity as a desire to promote the objects explicitly avowed.  There is, moreover, an important consideration, connected with this subject, which often escapes notice, namely, the extent to which new and multiplied appeals to charity often interfere with older, nearer, and more pressing claims.  Thus, the managers of the local hospital or dispensary or charity organisation have often too good cause to regret the enthusiastic philanthropy, which is sending help, of questionable utility, to distant parts of the world.  People cannot subscribe to everything, and they are too apt to fall in with the most recent and most fashionable movement.  In venturing on these remarks, I trust it is needless to say that I am far from deprecating the general practice of subscribing to charities and public objects, a form of co-operation which has been rendered indispensable by the habits and circumstances of modern life.  I am simply insisting on the importance and responsibility of ascertaining whether the aims proposed are likely to be productive of good or evil, and deprecating the cowardice or listlessness which yields to a solicitation, irrespectively of the merits of the proposal.

These solicitations often take the offensive form, which is intentionally embarrassing to the person solicited, of an appeal to relieve the purveyor of the subscription-list himself from the obligation incurred by a ‘guarantee.’  The issue is thus ingeniously and unfairly transferred from the claims of the object, which it is designed to promote, to the question of relieving a friend or a neighbour from a heavy pecuniary obligation.  ’Surely you will never allow me to pay all this money myself.’  But why not, unless I approve of the object, and, even if I do, why should I increase my subscription, on account of an obligation voluntarily incurred by you, without any encouragement from me?  In a case of this kind, the ‘guarantee’ ought to be regarded as simply irrelevant, and the question decided solely on the merits of the result to be attained.  Of course, I must be understood to be speaking here only of those cases in which the ‘guarantee’ is used as an additional argument for eliciting subscriptions, not of those cases in which, for convenience sake, or in order to secure celerity of execution, a few wealthy persons generously advance the whole sum required for a project, being quite willing to pay it themselves, unless they meet with ready and cheerful co-operation.