Such men have great power, and, if their philanthropic expenditure is wisely guided, it may be of incalculable benefit. I have already indicated many of the channels in which it may safely flow, but one or two additional hints on the subject may not be useless. Perhaps as a general rule these men will find that they can act most wisely by strengthening and enlarging old charities which are really good, rather than by founding new ones. Competition is the soul of industry, but certainly not of charity, and there is in England a deplorable waste of money and machinery through the excessive multiplication of institutions intended for the same objects. The kind of ambition to which I have just referred tends to make men prefer new charities which can be identified with their names; the paid officials connected with charities have become a large and powerful profession, and their influence is naturally used in the same direction; the many different religious bodies in the country often refuse to combine, and each desires to have its own institutions; and there are fashions in charity which, while they greatly stimulate generosity, have too often the effect of diverting it from the older and more unobtrusive forms. On the other hand, one of the most important facts in our present economical condition is that an extraordinary and almost unparalleled development of industrial prosperity has been accompanied by extreme and long-continued agricultural depression and by a great fall in the rate of interest. Wealth in many forms is accumulating with wonderful rapidity, and the increased rate of wages is diffusing prosperity among the working classes; but those who depend directly or indirectly on agricultural rents or on interest of money invested in trust securities have been suffering severely, and they comprise some of the most useful, blameless, and meritorious classes in the community. The same causes that have injured them have fallen with crushing severity on old-established institutions which usually derive their income largely or entirely from the rent of land or from money invested in the public funds. The bitter cry of distress that is rising from the hospitals and many other ancient charities, from the universities, from the clergy of the Established Church, abundantly proves it.