Chapter 1: A Stupendous Undertaking

Such, then, is a brief and hurried survey of Darkest England, and those who have been in the depths of the enchanted forest in which wander the tribes of the despairing Lost will be the first to admit that I have in no way exaggerated its horrors, while most will assert that I have under-estimated the number of its denizens. I have, indeed, very scrupulously striven to keep my estimates of the extent of the evil within the lines of sobriety. Nothing in such an enterprise as that on which I am entering could worse befall me than to come under the reproach of sensationalism or exaggeration. Most of the evidence upon which I have relied is taken direct from the official statistics supplied by the Government Returns; and as to the rest, I can only say that if my figures are compared with those of any other writer upon this subject, it will be found that my estimates are the lowest. I am not prepared to defend the exact accuracy of my calculations, excepting so far as they constitute the minimum. To those who believe that the numbers of the wretched are far in excess of my figures, I have nothing to say, excepting this, that if the evil is so much greater than I have described, then let your efforts be proportioned to your estimate, not to mine. The great point with each of us is, not how many of the wretched exist to-day, but how few shall there exist in the years that are to come.

The dark and dismal jungle of pauperism, vice, and despair is the inheritance to which we have succeeded from the generations and centuries past, during which wars, insurrections, and internal troubles left our forefathers small leisure to attend to the well-being of the sunken tenth. Now that we have happened upon more fortunate times, let us recognise that we are our brother's keepers, and set to work, regardless of party distinctions and religious differences, to make this world of ours a little bit more like home for those whom we call our brethren.

The problem, it must be admitted, is by no means a simple one; nor can anyone accuse me in the foregoing pages of having minimised the difficulties which heredity, habit, and surroundings place in the way of its solution, but unless we are prepared to fold our arms in selfish ease and say that nothing can be done, and thereby doom those lost millions to remediless perdition in this world, to say nothing of the next, the problem must be solved in some way. But in what way? That is the question. It may tend, perhaps, to the crystallisation of opinion on this subject if I lay down, with such precision as I can command, what must be the essential elements of any scheme likely to command success.