Welsh Journals

works of Kay, Hyde Hall and Walter Davies. In addition, there is the unpublished N.L.W. MS. 821 C, a survey of Caernarvonshire by the land-agent William Williams in 1806. The Vaynol survey, however, is the first detailed description we have of that vital unit of land ownership and management, the large estate. It is through such a survey, therefore, that we can obtain a close-up view of the farming of individual holdings, and in this instance we feel the more keenly the overwhelming poverty and harsh struggle for existence experienced by many tenants in this difficult farming region. Some indeed, as the survey reveals, sold up and emigrated to north America. Farming on the Vaynol estate, despite its 'progressive' policy of granting leases for twenty-one years, was all too frequently characterized by dilapidated farm buildings (most of them erected by the lessee), broken- down fences, neglect of drainage and manuring, exhaustive over-cropping of the soil, and meadows damaged by the removal of turfs for fuel. The editor points out the reasons given by the surveyor for such a failure to improve at this time of 'agricultural revolution': the intermixture of fields occupied by different tenants which prevented a proper system of estate management; multiple ownership, often by members of the same family; occupations other than farming; and, finally, the possibility of rent increases following upon tenants' improvements. Neglect was thus the fault of both owner and tenant, and the agent (the editor informs us), recognizing the run-down state of many holdings, advocated in 1799 that 'the tenants should be tied to a proper restriction of tillage which they must observe'. Mr. Roberts, in his Introduction, helpfully draws out and explains many significant features contained in the survey of the farming practices of this particular region. He also includes twelve plates of estate plans and field names of holdings. All add up to a publication which deepens our knowledge of the Welsh rural past at a crucial time in its development. DAVID W. HOWELL Swansea. DRINK AND THE VICTORIANS: THE TEMPERANCE QUESTION IN ENGLAND, 1815-1872. By Brian Harrison. Faber and Faber, 1971. Pp. 510. £ 5.50. Dr. Harrison's excellent book fills a long-standing gap in the histori- ography of Victorian Britain. Employing most of the devices of the modern social historian, Dr. Harrison examines the rise and fall of a movement whose glories have now passed. He is the first true non-partisan to discuss the temperance movement at any length, and as such he is very fair to different groups of people who made no effort to be fair to one another. Whereas historians inside the temperance movement have tended to treat their material in the form of uncritical narrative, much of which is anecdotal and antiquarian in character, it is the achievement of Dr. Harrison that he has resurrected a forgotten complex of social