been turned into a curse by creating an absurdly artificial standard of living and of sociality, so burdensome that every man is ashamed to ask a friend to the leg of mutton dinners of his grandfather's standard. It is thought mean to spend less per head on a single dinner than the amount which ought to keep a man in comfort for a couple of weeks. Real, genial sociality has been uprooted and killed in the senseless race of ostentation. And practically nothing has been done for public benefits by endowments. As a manufacturer in a park, with a motor, remarked, "you cannot expect anyone not to spend up to his income." The idea of using what is really requisite for successful living, and not squandering money beyond that, is entirely forgotten. The simplicity of having nothing that is unnecessary, the pleasure of having a large balance to use beyond the needs of life, and the comfort of never needing to worry about money, are all unknown to those who spend up to the hilt, and who turn their money into a grinding curse of life. The distribution of surplus wealth among the middle classes has proved an entire failure in national economics. Now, lastly, the surplus is passing into a new class, the large business speculator, the financier, and trust-man. So far as we can yet see, this class is justifying itself far more than the middle class. In fifty years the middle classes have not given as much to endow education as the millionaires have given in five years. A man with a gigantic income cannot spend more than a few per cent. of it on himself. He must use it for large public enterprises which benefit mankind. To put it in another form, a great dealer has organised a method for taxing the community in such a way that they do not notice it. And if he spends the tax on public improvements or endowments—railways, new inventions, or universities—he is an active benefactor to the whole community. He sponges up the surplus which would otherwise be frittered away in ostentation or luxury, and drops it out where it is a permanent benefit. As a principle we may hate the trust-man and multi-millionaire, but he may be a lesser curse than the extravagant middle or lower-class man. War is hateful, but it may be a lesser curse than rotting in peace. So long as the average man shows by his selfish luxury that he is incapable of managing wealth, so long the private taxer—who prevents some of the waste—will be a positive blessing to the community. The evolution of the great money-manager type now going on is a distinct step forward in the prevention of waste, and the growth of a better system of expenditure. A million pounds a year scattered over a hundred thousand men will be all eaten up in luxuries or lost in folly; spread among a thousand men it will only swell their wasteful pride of life; but put it in the hands of ten men who have worked for it, and they will spend most of it in useful work that will bear fruit. Until the education, moral and intellectual,