eyes of economists of this school is the path of wisdom, and they were profoundly distrustful of all legislative attempts to restrict or interfere with the course of industrial progress. In our own generation a somewhat different tendency has manifestly strengthened. It has been said that past political economists paid too much attention to the accumulation and too little to the distribution of wealth. Men have become more sensible to the high level of happiness and moral well-being that has been attained in some of the smaller and somewhat stagnant countries of Europe, where wealth is more generally attained by thrift and steady industry than by great industrial or commercial enterprise, in which there are few large fortunes but little acute poverty, a low standard of luxury, but a high standard of real comfort. The enormous evils that have grown up in wealthy countries, in the form of company-mongering, excessive competition, extravagant and often vicious luxury, and dishonest administration of public funds, are more and more felt, and it is only too true that in these countries there are large and influential circles of society in which all considerations of character, intellect, or manners seem lost in an intense thirst for wealth and for the things that it can give. Sometimes we find vast fortunes in countries where there is but little enterprise and a very low standard of comfort among the people, and where this is the case it is usually due to unequal laws or corrupt administration. In the free, democratic, and industrial communities great fluctuations and disparities of wealth are inevitable, and some of the most colossal fortunes have, no doubt, been made by the evil methods I have described. They are, however, only a minority, and not a very large one. Like all the great successes of life, abnormal accumulation of wealth is usually due to the combination in different proportions of ability, character, and chance, and is not tainted with dishonesty. On the whole, the question that should be asked is not what a man has, but how he obtained it and how he uses it. When wealth is honestly acquired and wisely and generously used, the more rich men there are in a country the better.