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 selfish, 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.
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