would be largely increased, and, if the practice became general, the state would have to resort to some other mode of taxation or collect its customs-revenue at a most disproportionate cost.  Thus, a little reflexion shows that smuggling is really theft, and I cannot but think that it would be to the moral as well as the material advantage of the community if it were called by that name, and were visited with the same punishment as petty larceny.  Exactly the same remarks, of course, apply to the evasion of income-tax, or of rates or taxes of any kind, which are imposed by a legitimate authority.  Travelling on a railway without a ticket or in a higher class or for a greater distance than that for which the ticket was taken is, similarly, only a thinly disguised case of theft, and should be treated accordingly.  The sale or purchase of pirated editions of books is another case of the same kind, the persons from whom the money is stolen being the authors or publishers.  Many paltry acts of pilfering, such as the unauthorised use of government-paper or franks, or purloining novels or letter-paper from a club, or plucking flowers in a public garden, fall under the same head of real, though not always obvious, thefts.  There is, of course, a certain degree of pettiness which makes them insignificant, but there is always a danger lest men should think too lightly of acts of this kind, whether done by themselves or others.  The best safeguard, perhaps, against thoughtless wrong-doing to the community or large social aggregates is to ask ourselves these two questions:  Should we commit this act, or what should we think of a man who did commit it, in the case of a private individual?  What would be the result, if every one who had the opportunity were to do the same?  Many of these acts would, then, stand out in their true light, and we should recognise that they are not only mean but criminal.

Other, but analogous, instances of the failure of men to realise their obligations to society or to large social aggregates are to be found in the careless and perfunctory manner in which persons employed by government, or by corporations, or large companies, often perform their duties.  If they were in the service of a private employer, they would at all events realise, even if they did not act on their conviction, that they were defrauding him by idling away their time or attending to their own affairs, or those of charities or institutions in which they were interested, when they ought to be attending to the concerns of their employer.  But in a government or municipal office, or the establishment of a large company, no one in particular seems to be injured by the ineffective discharge of their functions; and hence it does not occur to them that they are receiving their wages without rendering the equivalent of them.  The inadequate supervision which overlooks or condones this listlessness is, of course, itself also the result of a similar failure to realise responsibility.