ish, are often the motives of those who
solicit me, and that the love of notoriety, or the gratification of a
feeling of self-importance, or a fussy restlessness, or the craving for
preferment is frequently quite as powerful an incentive of their
activity as a desire to promote the objects explicitly avowed. There is,
moreover, an important consideration, connected with this subject, which
often escapes notice, namely, the extent to which new and multiplied
appeals to charity often interfere with older, nearer, and more pressing
claims. Thus, the managers of the local hospital or dispensary or
charity organisation have often too good cause to regret the
enthusiastic philanthropy, which is sending help, of questionable
utility, to distant parts of the world. People cannot subscribe to
everything, and they are too apt to fall in with the most recent and
most fashionable movement. In venturing on these remarks, I trust it is
needless to say that I am far from deprecating the general practice of
subscribing to charities and public objects, a form of co-operation
which has been rendered indispensable by the habits and circumstances of
modern life. I am simply insisting on the importance and responsibility
of ascertaining whether the aims proposed are likely to be productive of
good or evil, and deprecating the cowardice or listlessness which yields
to a solicitation, irrespectively of the merits of the proposal.

These solicitations often take the offensive form, which is
intentionally embarrassing to the person solicited, of an appeal to
relieve the purveyor of the subscription-list himself from the
obligation incurred by a 'guarantee.' The issue is thus ingeniously and
unfairly transferred from the claims of the object, which it is designed
to promote, to the question of relieving a friend or a neighbour from a
heavy pecuniary obligation. 'Surely you will never allow me to pay all
this money myself.' But why not, unless I approve of the object, and,
even if I do, why should I increase my subscription, on account of an
obligation voluntarily incurred by you, without any encouragement from
me? In a case of this kind, the 'guarantee' ought to be regarded as
simply irrelevant, and the question decided solely on the merits of the
result to be attained. Of course, I must be understood to be speaking
here only of those cases in which the 'guarantee' is used as an
additional argument for eliciting subscriptions, not of those cases