services to their private advantage. Just so far as this retarding condition exists the state is prevented from realising its present possibilities and from undertaking other beneficent work which it might perform particularly in the fields of education, art, sanitation, and philanthropy. Yet in spite of this heavy drag the more progressive modern states are extending their functions and, on the whole, giving better satisfaction to the needs of larger populations than ever before. Petty principalities and the city states of former times have passed away forever. The dominant modern national type of state stands for populations that must be reckoned by tens of millions. Even more significant than growth in population and territory, however, is the growth that has taken place in the number and complexity of political and other social relationships. It is true that far back in antiquity there were great and powerful despotisms, but they were held together largely by the strong hand, and, as compared with modern governments, performed very few services for their peoples. Within recent times inventions annihilating time and space have brought men closer together but they would not _cohere_ as they do in government, in business, and in other social activities, were the requisite moral factors not present. Civilisation has developed these factors, but at the same time, unfortunately, a new breed of parasites has come into existence to destroy in part the fruits of our more intelligent, more honest, and better equipped labour. Vigorous fighting is necessary to limit the damage inflicted by the type of social marauder which Professor Ross so trenchantly describes,—“the respectable, exemplary, trusted personage who, strategically placed at the focus of a spider web of fiduciary relations, is able from his office chair to pick a thousand pockets, poison a thousand sick, pollute a thousand minds, or imperil a thousand lives.”[115] With full recognition of the danger threatening our highly specialised society from resourceful enemies of this character there is still another aspect of the case which should not be forgotten. One must learn “to look at the doughnut as well as the hole.” While insisting upon the enormity of the offences committed by our modern social pirates let us not ignore the significance of the multiplication of foci strategically placed within the spider webs of fiduciary relations. If social trusts were habitually betrayed they could not increase in number and importance. Such enormous and complex aggregations as are brought together under modern governments, for example, mean that men numbered on the scale of millions are convinced of the substantial fidelity to their deepest interests of the governmental structures to which they acknowledge allegiance. If this were not the case, if corruption and other abuses infected governments to such an extent as to render them unfaithful to their