From the very beginning the committee never lacked money.  Though they were actuated by purely philanthropic motives, it was one of their first principles never to sink large sums of money in any undertaking that would not pay its own expenses ultimately.  There was, therefore, a healthy business-like tone about whatever they did, that distinguished their efforts from many well-intentioned, but sickly, undertakings of the same day, which one after another came to grief, doing nearly as much harm as good.  One of their first works was to buy up lots and dwellings in the worst districts of Toronto, where miserable shanties and hovels stood in fetid slums, as foul as any in London or Glasgow.  The hovels and shanties were then torn down, and respectable dwellings erected in their stead.  The unfortunate wretches, the victims of drink, crime, or thriftlessness, who inhabited such places, were not turned away to seek a fouler footing elsewhere, but were taken in hand by the working-men on the committee, and were started afresh in life with every encouragement.  They were generally permanently rescued from degradation, but if some fell back their children were saved, and so the next generation was spared a family of criminals.  Montreal was next visited and the same thing done there; attention was then turned to Quebec and Winnipeg.  Successful attempts were afterwards made to control the liquor traffic, not by sudden prohibition, which always increased the evil, but by common sense methods, necessarily somewhat slow, but sure.  When the Society had been at work ten years, there was a very perceptible diminution in the amount of crime and smaller offences in all their spheres of action.  Police forces could be decreased, and a prison here and there closed.  This had a tendency to lessen the rates, so the taxpayer became touched in his tenderest part—­his pocket.  His heart and his conscience then immediately softened toward the Society’s work, though years of preaching and the existence of all abominable evils close to his door had failed to move him.  When this point had been reached, the Society began to be looked upon as one of the great remedial agents of the age, and work was much easier.  One evil after another was grappled with, and in time subdued.  Scientific researches were set on foot in hygiene, medicine, and every subject from which the community at large could derive benefit, till in twenty years time so much general improvement had been effected that Canada’s ways of doing things came to be quoted in other countries as a precedent.  Our cities were the best built, best drained, cleanest and healthiest, and our city populations the most orderly and most enlightened.  The Society’s roll of members now included a great number of eminent men, and their operations were extended over the whole Dominion, and works of all kinds were carried on simultaneously in all parts.  Outside the Society, it had become quite fashionable for all classes to take the most eager interest in everything concerning the public welfare, so the Dominion continued to prosper and advance with wonderful rapidity.  Thus it happened that we came to take the lead among nations and have been able to keep foremost ever since, though with our 93,000,000 we are not by any means the largest nation.