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YEAST: A PROBLEM

PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION

This book was written nearly twelve years ago; and so many thingshave changed since then, that it is hardly fair to send it into theworld afresh, without some notice of the improvement—if such therebe—which has taken place meanwhile in those southern countiesof England, with which alone this book deals.

I believe that things are improved.  Twelve years more of thenew Poor Law have taught the labouring men greater self-help and independence;I hope that those virtues may not be destroyed in them once more, bythe boundless and indiscriminate almsgiving which has become the fashionof the day, in most parishes where there are resident gentry. If half the money which is now given away in different forms to theagricultural poor could be spent in making their dwellings fit for honestmen to live in, then life, morals, and poor-rates, would be saved toan immense amount.  But as I do not see how to carry out such aplan, I have no right to complain of others for not seeing.

Meanwhile cottage improvement, and sanitary reform, throughout thecountry districts, are going on at a fearfully slow rate.  Hereand there high-hearted landlords, like the Duke of Bedford, are doingtheir duty like men; but in general, the apathy of the educated classesis most disgraceful.

But the labourers, during the last ten years, are altogether betteroff.  Free trade has increased their food, without lessening theiremployment.  The politician who wishes to know the effect on agriculturallife of that wise and just measure, may find it in Mr. Grey of Dilston’sanswers to the queries of the French Government.  The country parsonwill not need to seek so far.  He will see it (if he be an observantman) in the faces and figures of his school-children.  He willsee a rosier, fatter, bigger-boned race growing up, which bids fairto surpass in bulk the puny and ill-fed generation of 1815-45, and equal,perhaps, in thew and sinew, to the men who saved Europe in the old Frenchwar.

If it should be so (as God grant it may), there is little fear butthat the labouring men of England will find their aristocracy able tolead them in the battle-field, and to develop the agriculture of theland at home, even better than did their grandfathers of the old wartime.

To a thoughtful man, no point of the social horizon is more fullof light, than the altered temper of the young gentlemen.  Theyhave their faults and follies still—for when will young bloodbe other than hot blood?  But when one finds, more and more, swearingbanished from the hunting-field, foul songs from the universities, drunkennessand gambling from the barracks; when one finds everywhere, whether atcollege, in camp, or by the cover-side, more and more, young men desirousto learn their duty as Englishmen, and if possible to do it; when onehears their altered tone toward the middle classes, and that word ‘snob’(thanks very much to Mr. Thackeray) used by them in its true sense,without regard of rank; when one watches, as at Aldershott, the careand kindness of officers toward their men; and over and above all this,when one finds in every profession (in that of the soldier as much asany) young men who are not only ‘in the world,’ but (inreligious phraseology) ‘of the world,’ living God-fearing,virtuous, and useful lives, as Christian men should: then indeed onelooks forward with hope and confidence to the day when these men shallsettle down in life, and become, as holders of the land, the leadersof agricultural progress, and the guides and guardians of the labouringman.

I am bound to speak of the farmer, as I know him in the South ofEngland.  In the North he is a man of altogether higher educationand breeding: but he is, even in the South, a much better man than itis the fashion to believe him.  No doubt, he has given heavy causeof complaint.  He was demoralised, as surely, if not as deeply,as his own labourers, by the old Poor Law.  He was bewildered—touse the mildest term—by promises of Protection from men who knewbetter.  But his worst fault after all has been, that young orold, he has copied his landlord too closely, and acted on his maximsand example.  And now that his landlord is growing wiser, he isgrowing wiser too.  Experience of the new Poor Law, and experienceof Free-trade, are helping him to show himself what he always was atheart, an honest Englishman.  All his brave persistence and industry,his sturdy independence and self-help, and last, but not least, hisstrong sense of justice, and his vast good-nature, are coming out moreand more, and working better and better upon the land and the labourer;while among his sons I see many growing up brave, manly, prudent youngmen, with a steadily increasing knowledge of what is required of them,both as manufacturers of food, and employers of human labour.

The country clergy, again, are steadily improving.  I do notmean merely in morality—for public opinion now demands that asa sine quà non—but in actual efficiency.  Every freshappointment seems to me, on the whole, a better one than the last. They are gaining more and more the love and respect of their flocks;they are becoming more and more centres of civilisation and moralityto their parishes; they are working, for the most part, very hard, eachin his own way; indeed their great danger is, that they should trusttoo much in that outward ‘business’ work which they do soheartily; that they should fancy that the administration of schoolsand charities is their chief business, and literally leave the Wordof God to serve tables.  Would that we clergymen could learn (someof us are learning already) that influence over our people is not tobe gained by perpetual interference in their private affairs, too ofteninquisitorial, irritating, and degrading to both parties, but by showingourselves their personal friends, of like passions with them. Let a priest do that.  Let us make our people feel that we speakto them, and feel to them, as men to men, and then the more cottageswe enter the better.  If we go into our neighbours’ housesonly as judges, inquisitors, or at best gossips, we are best—astoo many are—at home in our studies.  Would, too, that wewould recollect this—that our duty is, among other things, to