Any one can understand that this must be so, and that it could not help us to publish the amount all together.

If in a hundred places only a thousand pounds were raised, anybody can see that to cry aloud about the hundred thousand in any one of those places could not but make everybody in that place less capable of strenuous struggle such as is needed to get together each thousand.
Therefore, whilst publishing every year the properly audited balance-sheet referring to amounts received and spent in London, and similar balance-sheets, similarly audited, in each other capital, we have always refrained, and always shall refrain, from any such massing of totals, or glorying in any of them, as could help our enemies to check the flow of liberality anywhere.
When, in 1895, there seemed to be a general cry for some special investigation into the use made of the Fund raised as a result of The General's "Darkest England" Appeal, we were able to get a Commission of some of the most eminent men in the country, whose Report effectively disposed of any doubts at the time.
The Commission had for Chairman Earl Onslow, and its members were the Right Hon.

Sir Henry James (afterwards Lord James), Messrs.

Sydney Buxton, Walter Long, and Mr.Edwin Waterhouse, President of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, the Right Hon.

Hobhouse, M.P., acted as Secretary.
The Report of no Commission could, however, still any hostile tongue.
The cry for "investigation" has always been simply the cry of enmity or envy, which no amount of investigation could ever satisfy.