the one person whom we have "helped or benefited," that is to say, to whom we have given something, we have dragged ninety-nine people a little lower into the slough of fraud and mendicancy. We forget that most of them have wives and children whom they are dragging down with them into the abyss.
Then again, there is the "charity" of mixed motives. At election time in some places it rains coals and blankets and free dinners; a parliamentary candidate is judged by the size of his cheques to local societies and institutions. If a rich man, he has very possibly his tongue in his cheek; if a poor one, he gives with groans and mutterings. In any case, rich or poor, they both look upon it as part of the exigencies of our representative system, and regard it as a sort of blackmail. It makes very little difference to them whether their subscriptions are given to cottage hospitals or village ping-pong clubs. Rich men, again, not infrequently give big cheques with an eye upon political or social advancement—cheques which may be called "Pilkerton peerage" cheques. A newspaper starts a fund, and gets copy and circulation. Not long ago a new weekly paper was started in life with a charitable fund. The paper only lasted for three or four weeks, and there is no record as to what happened to the charitable fund; but its object was sufficiently clear. Is that the charity which "seeketh not her own"?
Of course, the cheque of the millionaire, the fund of the newspaper, even the subscriptions of the M.P., may be as much above suspicion as Cæsar's wife. Everything depends upon the motive. An old writer says that "well-doing is to be judged by the intention," and "to judge a man we must a long time follow and very curiously mark his steps." Charity will, of course, give its money
