In determining the cases in which we shall subordinate our own interests to those of others, or do good to others at our own risk or loss, it is essential that we should take account of the remote as well as the immediate effects of actions; and, moreover, that we should enquire into their general tendencies, or, in other words, ask ourselves what would happen if everybody or many people acted as we propose to act. Thus, at first sight, it might seem as if a rich man, at a comparatively small sacrifice to himself, might promote the greater good of his poor neighbours by distributing amongst them what to them would be considerable sums of money. If I have ten thousand a year, why should I not make fifty poor families happy by endowing them with a hundred a year each, which to them would be a handsome competency? The loss of five thousand a year would be to me simply an abridgment of superfluous luxuries, which I could soon learn to dispense with, while to them the gain of a hundred a year would be the substitution of comfort for penury and of case for perpetual struggle. The answer is that, in the first place, I should probably not, in the long run, be making these families really happy. The change of circumstances would, undoubtedly, confer considerable pleasure, while it continued to be a novelty, but their improved circumstances, when they became accustomed to them, would soon be out-balanced by the _ennui_ produced by want of employment; while, the motive to exertion being removed, and the taste for luxuries stimulated, they or the next generation would probably lapse again into poverty, which would be all the more keenly felt for their temporary enjoyment of prosperity. Moreover, I should be injuring the community at large, by withdrawing a number of persons from industrial employments and transferring them to the non-productive classes. Again, if the five thousand a year were withdrawn not from my personal expenditure, but from industrial enterprises in which I was engaged, I should be actually depriving the families of many workmen and artisans of the fruits of their honest labour for the purpose of enabling a smaller number of families to live in sloth and indolence. But, now, suppose the case I have imagined to become a general one, and that it was a common occurrence for rich men to dispense their superfluous wealth amongst their poorer neighbours, without demanding any return in labour or services. The result would inevitably be the creation of a large class of idle persons, who would probably soon become a torment to themselves, while their descendants, often brought up to no employment and with an insufficient income to support them, would probably lapse into pauperism. The effect on the community at large, if the evil became widely spread, would be the paralysis of trade and commerce. Of course, I am aware that these evils would be, to a certain extent, modified in