Much of the success of our modern social movements has been due to the exertions of the noble Society of Benefactors.  The members of this Society, as we well know, are now mostly men of independent means.  Their chief idea is to bring together and combine social forces for the public good, which were formerly wasted.  The Society has already existed for two generations, so that our rising generation is reaping the full benefit of its exertions.  It is chiefly to these exertions that the improved tone of public opinion is due, and the general, moral and intellectual elevation of the present day are largely owing to the same cause.  In the old benighted times before 1900 much wealth and ability were, for want of organization, allowed to run almost to waste as far as the general good of society was concerned.  Men of means led aimless lives, squandering their riches in foreign cities, or staying at home to accumulate more and more, forgetting, or never considering what a powerful means of ameliorating the condition of their fellow creatures was within their reach.  It was not only the lower classes that needed improvement, but the whole mass of society in all its aims, ideas and pursuits.  Improvement on this large scale would never have been accomplished by the elaborate theorising and much preaching of the nineteenth century.  Action, bold and fearless action, was wanted, and until men were found with minds entirely free from morbid theories, but full of the courage of their new convictions, the world had to wait in tantalizing suspense for improvement, always hoping that each new scientific discovery would enlighten mankind in the desired direction, but always doomed to be disappointed and to see humanity growing either more savage or physically weaker, simultaneously with each phase of enlightenment.  These things are perhaps truer of society in Europe, and in some of the States, than in our young Dominion, where everything was necessarily in a somewhat inchoate condition.  Yet had it not been for the great men who providentially appeared in our midst—­our history, our manners and customs, our whole career as a nation would simply have been a repetition of European civilization with all its defects, failures and vices.  Statistics of the period show that neither in the States nor in Canada, amidst all the surrounding newness, had there arisen any new social condition peculiar to this continent which remedied to any extent the evils rampant in old countries.  Lunatic asylums, in ghastly sarcasm on a self-styled intellectual age, reared their colossal facades and enclosed their thousands of human wrecks.  Huge prisons had to be built in every large town.  Hospitals were frequently crowded with victims of foul diseases.  Great cities abounded with filthy lanes, alleys, and dwellings like dens of wild beasts.  Epidemic diseases occurred from brutal disregard of sanitary measures.  Murder and suicide were rife.  Horrible accidents from preventible causes occurred daily.  Great fires