But meantime the mere knowledge that there is an association for the protection of children from cruelty, and another for the defence of animals against human brutes, is in itself a protection for both classes of victims. No parent or employer can wreak his vengeance or ill-temper upon a child, no driver or owner can torment an animal, without the consciousness that some agent may learn of it, or perhaps see it, and bring the offender to justice. Both of these movements, which at first seemed to so many intelligent persons to be strange and impracticable fancies, are among the greatest proofs of the deeper and wiser humanity of the age. These are illustrations of the same spirit which organizes charity and ameliorates penal systems. Mr. Bergh and Mr. Gerry are in the right line of moral descent from John Howard and Sir Samuel Romilly and Mrs. Fry and Miss Carpenter, and when Mr. McMaster brings his history of the American people down to the last decade he will record the purpose and work of the two modest societies as among the striking illustrations of the actual progress of that people. It is in Lecky's detailed account of the horrible carelessness and suffering, and of the inhuman desertion of prisoners and the poor of the last century in England that we get the true key to the actual condition of the country. Mr. McMaster has thrown a similar light upon the same inhumanity in this country a hundred years ago. Yet every endeavor to correct that inhumanity, to remember the man in the criminal, and wisely to succor a brother in the beggar, has been greeted as an effort to make a silk purse of a sow's ear, to make water run uphill, as the rose-water philanthropy and the coddling of scoundrels, by the same spirit which sneers at the work of Mr. Gerry and Mr. Bergh. Left to that spirit England would be to-day where it was a hundred and fifty years ago, and the signal triumphs of the century would have been unwon. Such a spirit is mingled of ignorance, cowardice, and stupid selfishness. It is always the obstruction of advancing humanity, always the contempt of generous and courageous minds. It is true, undoubtedly, that every forward step is not wisely taken, and that there are the most absurd parodies of philanthropy, as well as a great deal of pseudo philanthropy, which is merely the mask of knavery. We have taken great pleasure in these very columns in stripping off sundry masks of such philanthropy which is pursued by impostors of both sexes in this city. Common-sense, careful scrutiny, and intelligence, are indispensable in every form of charity and beneficence. But because of the conduct of Shepherd Cowley shall nothing be done for the relief of wretched children? Because of the elaborate system of fraudulent charity of the reverend knave who has been exposed here and elsewhere shall the poor be left without succor?