Transcribed , email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
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