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capital aucl labour will be made more clear. Many of our most 

 excruciating social sores spring from our blundering modes of 

 distributing the prodigious wealth which our intelligence and 

 industry are able to produce. The consequences of our econ- 

 omical clumsiness are seen in the inflated fortunes at one end 

 of the scale and the emaciated fortunes at the otiier. The con- 

 trasts between extreme opulence and extreme indigence are the 

 standing scandal of the country. The danger of the situation is 

 mitigated by charity. But the effect of charity is at best but 

 negative. It does not heal. Without venturing into the perilous 

 labyrinths of Political Economy, we may nevertheless urge that 

 the real remedy for the evil is not charity but equity ; and equity 

 does not mean the forcible transference of specie from one man's 

 pocket to another. It means that all who produce wealth should 

 enter into an equitable partnership with one another, and that 

 the fund which they all combine to produce should be divided 

 amongst them according to the share which each man had in 

 producing it. That equitable distribution of acquired wealth 

 would save society the scandal of excess in either direction. 

 Society will not be safe until every industrious citizen shall dis- 

 tinctly feel that he has something to lose, and that therefore his 

 interests are on the side of public order. " It is not to be expect- 

 ed," says John Stuart Mill, "that the division of the human 

 race into two hereditary classes, employers and employed can be 

 permanently maintained." Such a division is not favourable to the 

 development of the highest character. The employer naturally 

 wants the greatest amount of work at the least cost ; and the 

 employed naturally schemes to give the minimum of service for 

 the maximum of pay. The bright aspect of the case is that 

 both sides are willing to argue and inquire, and to accept the 

 results of investigation and of logic. What reciprocal concessions 

 may be needful will become more and more apparent, and the 

 governing good- will of the community will ensure that they shall 

 be made. In the meantime, until justice is ready, charity may 

 continue its consoUng services. There is a considerable percent- 

 age of philanthropic activity in the highest degree enlightened 

 and noble. In almost every town in the kingdom there are 

 'certain persons, cultured and opulent, who, instead of lounging 

 through hfe in luxurious self-indulgence spend itin laborious 

 philanthropic experiments. In London, little colonies of refined 

 people have deliberately taken up their abode in the vicinity of 

 the " slums " for the sole purpose of purifying by personal influ- 

 ence the barbarism around them. When the cholera visited 

 Marseilles a year or two since, there was an inglorious stampede 

 of the respectable inhabitants, but when that scourge last visited 

 London, numbers of ladies and gentlemen h'om the West End 

 betook themselves to the East End where the pestilence was 



