

Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk




YEAST: A PROBLEM




PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION



This book was written nearly twelve years ago; and so many things 
have changed since then, that it is hardly fair to send it into the 
world afresh, without some notice of the improvement--if such there 
be--which has taken place meanwhile in those southern counties of 
England, with which alone this book deals.

I believe that things are improved.  Twelve years more of the new 
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, by the boundless and indiscriminate almsgiving which has 
become the fashion of the day, in most parishes where there are 
resident gentry.  If half the money which is now given away in 
different forms to the agricultural poor could be spent in making 
their dwellings fit for honest men to live in, then life, morals, 
and poor-rates, would be saved to an immense amount.  But as I do 
not see how to carry out such a plan, I have no right to complain of 
others for not seeing.

Meanwhile cottage improvement, and sanitary reform, throughout the 
country districts, are going on at a fearfully slow rate.  Here and 
there high-hearted landlords, like the Duke of Bedford, are doing 
their duty like men; but in general, the apathy of the educated 
classes is most disgraceful.

But the labourers, during the last ten years, are altogether better 
off.  Free trade has increased their food, without lessening their 
employment.  The politician who wishes to know the effect on 
agricultural life of that wise and just measure, may find it in Mr. 
Grey of Dilston's answers to the queries of the French Government.  
The country parson will not need to seek so far.  He will see it (if 
he be an observant man) in the faces and figures of his school-
children.  He will see a rosier, fatter, bigger-boned race growing 
up, which bids fair to 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 French war.

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

To a thoughtful man, no point of the social horizon is more full of 
light, than the altered temper of the young gentlemen.  They have 
their faults and follies still--for when will young blood be other 
than hot blood?  But when one finds, more and more, swearing 
banished from the hunting-field, foul songs from the universities, 
drunkenness and gambling from the barracks; when one finds 
everywhere, whether at college, in camp, or by the cover-side, more 
and more, young men desirous to learn their duty as Englishmen, and 
if possible to do it; when one hears 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 care and 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 as any) 
young men who are not only 'in the world,' but (in religious 
phraseology) 'of the world,' living God-fearing, virtuous, and 
useful lives, as Christian men should:  then indeed one looks 
forward with hope and confidence to the day when these men shall 
settle down in life, and become, as holders of the land, the leaders 
of agricultural progress, and the guides and guardians of the 
labouring man.

I am bound to speak of the farmer, as I know him in the South of 
England.  In the North he is a man of altogether higher education 
and breeding:  but he is, even in the South, a much better man than 
it is the fashion to believe him.  No doubt, he has given heavy 
cause of complaint.  He was demoralised, as surely, if not as 
deeply, as his own labourers, by the old Poor Law.  He was 
bewildered--to use the mildest term--by promises of Protection from 
men who knew better.  But his worst fault after all has been, that 
young or old, he has copied his landlord too closely, and acted on 
his maxims and example.  And now that his landlord is growing wiser, 
he is growing wiser too.  Experience of the new Poor Law, and 
experience of Free-trade, are helping him to show himself what he 
always