s 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.

Again, have not you, though not manufacturers, or master-workmen, or
owners of land, have not you dependents, in whose behalf you may find
exercise for the principles to which I am convinced that study in this
matter will lead you? Your regard for servants is a case in point. And,
moreover, you may show in your or