What I have just said about individual rich men, applies in some measure to associations for benevolent purposes. They are to be looked upon as accessories—sometimes very useful ones—but they are not to be expected to supersede private enterprise. A man should neither wait for them; nor, when they exist, should he try to throw his duties upon them, and indolently expect that they are to think and act in all cases for him. Wherever a strong feeling on any subject exists, societies will naturally spring up in connexion with it. What such bodies have to do, is to direct their energies to those parts of the matter in which it is especially difficult for private enterprise to succeed. And private individuals should be cautious of slackening their endeavours in any good cause, merely because they are aware that some society exists which has the same object in view. * * * * * I come now to some member of that large class of persons who are not rich, nor great employers of labour, nor in any station of peculiar influence. He shudders as he reads those startling instances of suffering or crime in which the distress and ignorance of the labouring population will, occasionally, break out into the notice of the world. “What can I do?” he exclaims. “I feel with intensity the horrors I read of: but what can one man do?” I only ask him to study what he feels. He is a citizen. He cannot be such an isolated being as to have no influence. The conclusions which he comes to, after mature reflection, will not be without their weight. If individual citizens were anxious to form their opinions with care, on those questions respecting which they will have to vote and to act, there would be little need of organized bodies of men to carry great measures into effect. The main current of public opinion is made up of innumerable rills, so small, perhaps, that a child might with its foot divert the course of any one of them: but collected together they rush down with a force that is irresistible. If those who have actively to distribute the labour of the world knew that you, the great mass of private men, regarded them not for their money, but for their conduct to those in their employ, not for the portion which they may contrive to get for themselves, but for the well-being which they may give rise to, and regulate amongst others; why then your thoughts would be motives to them, urging them on in the right path. Besides, you would not stop at thinking. The man who gives time and thought to the welfare of others will seldom be found to grudge them anything else.