and wide-awakes were looked upon as insults to decent society, some of us wore both, with a most heroic indifference to public opinion. In the same way, there was often a trenchant, and almost truculent, tone about us, which was well calculated to keep men of my brother’s temperament at a distance. I rather enjoyed it myself, but learnt its unwisdom when I saw its effect on him, and others, who were inclined to join us, and would have proved towers of strength. It was right and necessary to denounce the evils of unlimited competition, and the falsehood of the economic doctrine of “every man for himself;” but quite unnecessary, and therefore unwise, to speak of the whole system of trade as “the disgusting vice of shop-keeping,” as was the habit of several of our foremost and ablest members. But what really hindered my brother from taking an active share in our work was not these eccentricities, which soon wore off, and were, at the worst, superficial. When he came to look the work fairly in the face, he found that he could not heartily sympathise with it; and the quality of thoroughness in him, which your grandfather notices, would not let him join half-heartedly. His conclusion was reached somehow in this way: “It comes to this, then. What you are all aiming at is, the complete overthrow of the present trade system, and the substitution of what, you say, will prove a more honest and righteous one. It is not simply a question of setting up, and getting a legal status for, these half-dozen associations of tailors and shoemakers, and these grocery stores. If the principle is good for anything, it must spread everywhere, and into every industrial process. It can’t live peaceably side by side with the present system. They are absolutely antagonistic, and the one must cast out the other. Isn’t that so?” I, of course, could not deny the conclusion. “Well, then,” his argument went on, “I don’t see my way clearly enough to go on. Your principle I can’t object to. It certainly seems truer, and stronger, and more in accord with Christianity, than the other. But, after all, the business of the world has always gone on upon the other, and the world has had plenty of time to get to understand its own business. You may say the results are not satisfactory, are proofs that the world has done nothing but blunder. It may be so: but, after all, experience must count for something, and the practical wear and tear of centuries. Self-interest may be a low motive, but the system founded upon it has managed somehow, with all its faults, to produce a very tolerable kind of world. When yours comes to be tried practically, just as great abuses may be found inseparable from it. You may only get back the old evils under new forms. The long and short of it is, I hate upsetting things, which seems to be your main object. You say that you like to see people discontented with society as it is, and are ready to help to make