ubordinates patriotism or morality to the narrower sentiment attaching
to a special law of honour, that it incurs the reprobation of the
moralist. But that it does sometimes deservedly incur this reprobation,
admits of no question. A man, to save the honour of his regiment, may
impair the efficiency of an army, or, to promote the interests of his
college or school, may inflict a lasting injury on education, or, to
protect his associates, may withhold or pervert evidence, or, to
aggrandize his trade, may ruin his country. It is the special province
of the moralist, in these cases, to intervene, and point out how the
more general is being sacrificed to the more special interest, the wider
to the narrower sentiment, morality itself to a point of honour or
etiquette. But, at the same time, he must recollect that the _esprit de
corps_ of any small aggregate of men is, as such, always an ennobling
and inspiriting sentiment, and that, unless it plainly detach them from
the rest of the community, and is attended with pernicious consequences
to society at large, it is unwise, if not reckless, to seek to impair
it.

To descend to a subject of less, though still of considerable,
importance, I may notice that cowardice and fear of 'what people will
say' lies at the bottom of much ill-considered charity and of that
facility with which men, often to the injury of themselves or their
families, if not of the very objects pleaded for, listen to the
solicitations of the inconsiderate or interested subscription-monger. It
has now become a truism that enormous mischief is done by the
indiscriminate distribution of alms to beggars or paupers. It is no less
true, though not so obvious, that much unintentional harm is often done
by subscriptions for what are called public objects. People ought to
have sufficient mental independence to ask themselves what will be the
ultimate effects of subscribing their money, and, if they honestly
believe that those effects will be pernicious or of doubtful utility,
they ought to have the courage to refuse it. There is no good reason,
simply because a man asks me and I find that others are yielding to him,
why I should subscribe a guinea towards disfiguring a church, or
erecting an ugly and useless building, or extending pauperism, or
encouraging the growth of luxurious habits, or spreading opinions which
I do not believe. And I may be the more emboldened in my refusal, when I
consider how mixed, or how self