It is a prevailing notion, that people are all so exclusively engrossed with their own concerns in this world, as to have no time or opportunity to take the least interest in those of their neighbours. No idea could be more mistaken. The truth is, a great many people—perhaps a _third_ of the population of large towns, and _three-fourths_ of those in small ones—are far more anxious about the concerns of their neighbours than about their own. In fact, society in this respect resembles the ape department in a menagerie, where, it is said, every individual chatterer neglects his own pan of meat (opposite his cage), and stretches with all his might to reach the mess of some distant companion in captivity, who, on his part, tries, with equal straining and exertion, to rob some other friend. The case, however, differs immensely as to intention. The monkeys, as we seriously believe, act thus from a wish to eat all the neighbouring pans of meat in the first place, after which they think it will be time enough to attend coolly to their own. But human beings look after each other’s morals and worldly prosperity through the most generous impulses. They think it selfish to be always attending to their own affairs, and that it would be an utter defiance of the greatest law of nature, if they were only to look after themselves. Our own business requires, perhaps, the first attention, but common justice to our race demands that all our _spare_ time, at least, should be devoted to a supervision of the concerns of other people, and a surveillance of their moral conduct. We are to love our neighbours as ourselves, and, in order to testify that we love them, we are to do as we do with children, castigate them properly whenever they misbehave. It is lamentable to think how negligent some large classes of society are respecting the affairs of their neighbours. In large cities, the more actively engaged citizens go on from year to year in the pursuit of their own advantage, never casting a single thought upon their next-door neighbours, unless, perhaps, to make a transient inquiry into the state of their credit. Is it not fortunate, that, while the men are thus apt to get wrapped up in their own sordid interests, the fairer and more generous part of the race are still in general sufficiently at leisure to see after their neighbours? What _would_ society do without these amiable controllers-general?—or what would society do, if these amiable controllers were to get so much engaged too, as to have no time for the affairs of their friends? It is dreadful even to think of such a calamity. How many poor improvident wretches would, in such an event, be left to sink or swim as chance directed! How naughty the world at large would become!