system, making due allowance for the superior civilisation, and
therefore sensitiveness, of the victims, reveals more misery.

Darkest England, like Darkest Africa, reeks with malaria. The foul and
fetid breath of our slums is almost as poisonous as that of the African
swamp. Fever is almost as chronic there as on the Equator. Every year
thousands of children are killed off by what is called defects of our
sanitary system. They are in reality starved and poisoned, and all
that can be said is that, in many cases, it is better for them that
they were taken away from the trouble to come.

Just as in Darkest Africa it is only a part of the evil and misery that
comes from the superior race who invade the forest to enslave and
massacre its miserable inhabitants, so with us, much of the misery of
those whose lot we are considering arises from their own habits.
Drunkenness and all manner of uncleanness, moral and physical, abound.
Have you ever watched by the bedside of a man in delirium tremens?
Multiply the sufferings of that one drunkard by the hundred thousand,
and you have some idea of what scenes are being witnessed in all our
great cities at this moment. As in Africa streams intersect the forest
in every direction, so the gin-shop stands at every corner with its
River of the Water of Death flowing seventeen hours out of the
twenty-four for the destruction of the people. A population sodden
with drink, steeped in vice, eaten up by every social and physical
malady, these are the denizens of Darkest England amidst whom my life
has been spent, and to whose rescue I would now summon all that is best
in the manhood and womanhood of our land.

But this book is no mere lamentation of despair. For Darkest England,
as for Darkest Africa, there is a light beyond. I think I see my way