University of Virginia Library

II. THE AGRICULTURISTS

The general spirit represented by such movements was by no means confined to the commercial or manufacturing classes; and its most characteristic embodiment is to be found in the writings of a leading agriculturist.

Arthur Young,[5] born in 1741, was the son of a clergyman, who had also a small ancestral property at Bradfield, near Bury St. Edmunds. Accidents led to his becoming a farmer at an early age. He showed more zeal than discretion, and after trying three thousand experiments on his farm, he was glad to pay £100 to another tenant to take his farm off his hands. This experience as a practical agriculturist, far from discouraging him, qualified him in his own opinion to speak with authority, and he became a devoted missionary of the gospel of agricultural improvement. The enthusiasm with which he admired more successful labourers in the cause, and the indignation with which he regards the sluggish and retrograde, are charming. His kindliness, his keen interest in the prosperity of all men, rich or poor, his ardent belief in progress, combined with his quickness of observation, give a charm to the writings which embody his experience. Tours in England and a temporary land-agency in Ireland supplied him with materials for books which made him known both in England and on the Continent. In 1779 he returned to Bradfield, where he soon afterwards came into possession of his paternal estate, which became his permanent home. In 1784 he tried to extend his propaganda by bringing out the Annals of Agriculture -- a monthly publication, of which forty-five half-yearly volumes appeared. He had many able contributors and himself wrote many interesting articles, but the pecuniary results were mainly negative. In 1791 his circulation was only 350 copies.[6] Meanwhile his acquaintance with the duc de Liancourt led to tours in France from 1788 to 1790. His Travels in France, first published in 1792, has become a classic. In 1793 Young was made secretary to the Board of Agriculture, of which I shall speak presently. He became known in London society as well as in agricultural circles. He was a handsome and attractive man, a charming companion, and widely recognised as an agricultural authority. The empress of Russia sent him a snuff-box; 'Farmer George' presented a merino ram; he was elected member of learned societies; he visited Burke at Beaconsfield, Pitt at Holmwood, and was a friend of Wilberforce and of Jeremy Bentham.

Young had many domestic troubles. His marriage was not congenial; the loss of a tenderly loved daughter in 1797 permanently saddened him; he became blind, and in his later years sought comfort in religious meditation and in preaching to his poorer neighbours. He died 20th April 1820. He left behind him a gigantic history of agriculture, filling ten folio volumes of manuscript, which, though reduced to six by an enthusiastic disciple after his death, have never found their way to publication.

The Travels in France, Young's best book, owes one merit to the advice of a judicious friend, who remarked that the previous tours had suffered from the absence of the personal details which interest the common reader. The insertion of these makes Young's account of his French tours one of the most charming as well as most instructive books of the kind. It gives the vivid impression made upon a keen and kindly observer in all their freshness. He sensibly retained the expressions of opinion made at the time. 'I may remark at present,' he says,[7] 'that although I was totally mistaken in my prediction, yet, on a revision, I think I was right in it.' It was right, he means, upon the data then known to him, and he leaves the unfulfil led prediction as it was. The book is frequently cited in justification of the revolution, and it may be fairly urged that his authority is of the more weight, because he does not start from any sympathy with revolutionary principles. Young was in Paris when the oath was taken at the tennis-court; and makes his reflections upon the beauty of the British Constitution, and the folly of visionary reforms, in a spirit which might have satisfied Burke. He was therefore not altogether inconsistent when, after the outrages, he condemned the revolution, however much the facts which he describes may tend to explain the inevitableness of the catastrophe. At any rate, his views are worth notice by the indications which they give of the mental attituDe of a typical English observer.

Young in his vivacious way struck out some of the phrases which became proverbial with later economists. 'Give a man the secure possession of a bleak rock and he will turn it into a garden. Give him a nine years' lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert.'[8] 'The magic of PROPERTY turns sand to gold.'[9] He is delighted with the comfort of the small proprietors near Pau, which reminds him of English districts still inhabited by small yeomen.[10] Passing to a less fortunate region, he explains that the prince de Souvise has a vast property there. The property of a grand 'seigneur' is sure to be a desert.[11] The signs which indicate such properties are 'wastes, landes, deserts, fern, ling.' The neighbourhood of the great residences is well peopled -- 'with deer, wild boars, and wolves.' 'Oh,' he exclaims, 'if I was the legislator of France for a day, I would make such great lords skip again!' 'Why,' he asked, 'were the people miserable in lower Savoy?' 'Because,' was the reply, 'there are seigneurs everywhere.'[12] Misery in Brittany was due 'to the execrable maxims of despotism or the equally detestable prejudices of a feudal nobility.'[13] There was nothing, he said, in the province but 'privileges and poverty,'[14] privileges of the nobles and poverty of the peasants.

Young was profoundly convinced, moreover, that, as he says more than once[15] 'everything in this world depends on government.' He is astonished at the stupidity and ignorance of the provincial population, and ascribes it to the lethargy produced by despotism.[16] He contrasts it with 'the energetic and rapid circulation of wealth, animation, and intelligence of England,' where 'blacksmiths and carpenters' would discuss every political event. And yet he heartily admires some of the results of a centralised monarchy. He compares the miserable roads in Catalonia on the Spanish side of the frontier with the magnificent causeways and bridges on the French side. The difference is due to the 'one all-powerful cause that instigates mankind... government.'[17] He admires the noble public works, the canal of Languedoc, the harbours at Cherbourg and Havre, and the école vétérinaire where agriculture is taught upon scientific principles. He is struck by the curious contrast between France and England. In France the splendid roads are used by few travellers, and the inns are filthy pothouses; in England there are detestable roads, but a comparatively enormous traffic. When he wished to make the great nobles 'skip' he does not generally mean confiscation. He sees indeed One place where in 1790 the poor had seized a piece of waste land, declaring that the poor were the nation, and that the waste belonged to the nation. He declares[18] that he considers their action 'wise, rational, and philosophical,' and wishes that there were a law to make such conduct legal in England. But his more general desire is that the landowners should be compelled to do their duty. He complains that the nobles live in 'wretched holes' in the country in order to save the means of expenditure upon theatres, entertainments, and gambling in the towns.[19] 'Banishment alone will force the French nobility to do what the English do for pleasure -- to reside upon and adorn their estates.'[20] He explains to a French friend that English agriculture has flourished 'in spite of the teeth of our ministers'; we have had many Colberts, but not one Sully;[21] and we should have done much better, he thinks, had agriculture received the same attention as commerce. This is the reverse of Adam Smith's remark upon the superior liberality of the English country-gentleman, who did not, like the manufacturers, invoke protection and interference. In truth, Young desired both advantages, the vigour of a centralised government and the energy of an independent aristocracy. His absence of any general theory enables him to do justice in detail at the cost of consistency in general theory. In France, as he saw, the nobility had become in the main an encumbrance, a mere dead weight upon the energies of the agriculturist. But he did not infer that large properties in land were bad in themselves; for in England he saw that the landowners were the really energetic and improving class. He naturally looked at the problem from the point of view of an intelligent land-agent. He is full of benevolent wishes for the labourer, and sympathises with the attempt to stimulate their industry and improve their dwellings, and denounces oppression whether in France or Ireland with the heartiest goodwill. But it is characteristic of the position that such a man -- an enthusiastic advocate of industrial progress -- was a hearty admirer of the English landowner. He sets out upon his first tour, announcing that he does not write for farmers, of whom not one in five thousand reads anything, but for the country-gentlemen, who are the great improvers. Tull, who introduced turnips; Weston, who introduced clover; Lord Townshend and Allen, who introduced 'marling' in Norfolk, were all country-gentlemen, and it is from them that he expects improvement. He travels everywhere, delighting in their new houses and parks, their picture galleries, and their gardens laid out by Kent or 'Capability Brown'; he admires scenery, climbs Skiddaw, and is rapturous over views of the Alps and Pyrenees; but he is thrown into a rage by the sight of wastes, wherever improvement is possible. What delights him is an estate with a fine country-house of Palladian architecture ('Gothic' is with him still a term of abuse),[22] with grounds well laid out and a good home-farm, where experiments are being tried, and surrounded by an estate in which the farm-buildings show the effects of the landlord's good example and judicious treatment of his tenantry. There was no want of such examples. He admires the marquis of Rockingham, at once the most honourable of statesmen and most judicious of improvers. He sings the praises of the duke of Portland, the earl of Darlington, and the duke of Northumberland. An incautious announcement of the death of the duke of Grafton, remembered chiefly as one of the victims of Junius, but known to Young for his careful experiments in sheep-breeding, produced a burst of tears, which, as he believed, cost him his eyesight. His friend, the fifth duke of Bedford (died 1802), was one of the greatest improvers for the South, and was succeeded by another friend, the famous Coke of Holkham, afterwards earl of Leicester, who is said to have spent half a million upon the improvement of his property. Young appeals to the class in which such men were leaders, and urges them, not against their wishes, we may suppose, and, no doubt, with much good sense, to take to their task in the true spirit of business. Nothing, he declares, is more out of place than the boast of some great landowners that they never raise their rents.[23] High rents produce industry. The man who doubles his rents benefits the country more than he benefits himself. Even in Ireland,[24] a rise of rents is one great cause of improvement, though the rent should not be excessive, and the system of middlemen is altogether detestable. One odd suggestion is characteristic.[25] He hears that wages are higher in London than elsewhere. Now, he says, in a trading country low wages are essential. He wonders, therefore, that the legislature does not limit the growth of London.

This, we may guess, is one of the petulant utterances of early years which he would have disavowed or qualified upon maturer refection. But Young is essentially an apostle of the 'glorious spirit of improvement,'[26] which has converted Norfolk sheep-walks into arable fields, and was spreading throughout the country and even into Ireland. His hero is the energetic landowner, who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before; who introduces new breeds of cattle and new courses of husbandry. He is so far in sympathy with the Wealth of Nations, although he says of that book that, while he knows of 'no abler work,' he knows of none 'fuller of poisonous errors.'[27] Young, that is, sympathised with the doctrine of the physiocrats that agriculture was the one source of real wealth, and took Smith to be too much on the side of commerce. Young, however, was as enthusiastic a free-trader as Smith. He naturally denounces the selfishness of the manufacturers who, in 1788, objected to the free export of English wool,[28] but he also assails monopoly in general. The whole system, he says (on occasion of Pitt's French treaty), is rotten to the core. The 'vital spring and animating soul of commerce is LIBERTY.'[29] Though he talks of the balance of trade, he argues in the spirit of Smith or Cobden that we are benefited by the wealth of our customers. If we have to import more silk, we shall export more cloth. Young, indeed, was everything but a believer in any dogmatic or consistent system of Political Economy, or, as he still calls it, Political Arithmetic. His opinions were not of the kind which can be bound to any rigid formulae. After investigating the restrictions of rent and wages in different districts, he quietly accepts the conclusion that the difference is due to accident.[30] He has as yet no fear of Malthus before his eyes. He is roused to indignation by the pessimist theory then common, that population was decaying.[31] Everywhere he sees signs of progress; buildings, plantations, woods, and canals. Employment, he says, creates population, stimulates industry, and attracts labour from backward districts. The increase of numbers is an unqualified benefit. He has no dread of excess. In Ireland, he observes, no one is fool enough to deny that population is increasing, though people deny it in England, 'even in the most productive period of her industry and wealth.'[32] One cause of this blessing is the absence or the poor-law. The English poor-law is detestable to him for a reason which contrasts significantly with the later opinion. The laws were made 'in the very spirit of depopulation'; they are 'monuments of barbarity and mischief'; for they give to every parish an interest in keeping down the population. This tendency was in the eyes of the later economist a redeeming feature in the old system; though it had been then so modified as to stimulate what they took to be the curse, as young held it to be the blessing, of a rapid increase of population.

With such views Young was a keen advocate of the process of enclosure which was going on with increasing rapidity. He found a colleague, who may be briefly noticed as a remarkable representative of the same movement. Sir John Sinclair (1754-1835)[33] was heir to an estate of sixty thousand acres in Caithness which produced only £2300 a year, subject to many encumbrances. The region was still in a primitive state. There were no roads: agriculture was of the crudest kind; part of the rent was still paid in feudal services; the natives were too ignorant or lazy to fish, and there were no harbours. Trees were scarce enough to justify Johnson, and a list of all the trees in the country included currant-bushes.[34] Sinclair was a pupil of the poet Logan: studied under Blair at Edinburgh and Millar at Glasgow; became known to Adam Smith, and, after a short time at Oxford, was called to the English bar. Sinclair was a man of enormous energy, though not of vivacious intellect. He belonged to the prosaic breed, which created the 'dismal science,' and seems to have been regarded as a stupendous bore. Bores, however, represent a social force not to be despised, and Sinclair was no exception.

His father died when he was sixteen. When twenty years old he collected his tenants, and in one night made a road across a hill which had been pronounced impracticable. He was an enthusiastic admirer of Gaelic traditions; defended the authenticity of Ossian; supported Highland games, and brought Italian travellers to listen to the music of the bagpipes. When he presented himself to his tenants in the Highland costume, on the withdrawal of its prohibition, they expected him to lead them in a foray upon the lowlands in the name of Charles Edward. He afterwards raised a regiment of 'fencibles' which served in Ireland in 1798, and, when disbanded, sent a large contingent to the Egyptian expedition. But he rendered more peaceful services to his country. He formed new farms; he enclosed several thousand acres; as head of the 'British Wool Society,' he introduced the Cheviots or 'long sheep' to the North -- an improvement which is said to have doubled the rents of many estates; he introduced agricultural shows; he persuaded government in 1801 to devote the proceeds of the confiscated estates of Jacobites to the improvement of Scottish communications; he helped to introduce fisheries and even manufactures; and was a main agent in the change which made Caithness one of the most rapidly improving parts of the country. His son assures us that he took every means to obviate the incidental evils which have been the pretexts of denunciators of similar improvements. Sinclair gained a certain reputation by a History of the Revenue (1785-90), and, like Malthus, travelled on the Continent to improve his knowledge. His first book finished, he began the great statistical work by which he is best remembered. He is said to have introduced into English the name of 'statistics,' for the researches of which all economical writers were beginning to feel the necessity. He certainly did much to introduce the reality. Sinclair circulated a number of queries (upon 'natural history,' 'population,' 'productions,' and 'miscellaneous' informations) to every parish minister in Scotland. He surmounted various jealousies naturally excited, and the ultimate result was the Statistical Account of Scotland which appeared in twenty-one volumes between 1791 and 1799.[35] It gives an account of every parish in Scotland, and was of great value as supplying[36] basis for all social investigations. Sinclair bore the expense, and gave the profits to the 'Sons of the Clergy.' In 1793 Sinclair, who had been in parliament since 1780, made himself useful to Pitt in connection with the issue of exchequer bills to meet the commercial crisis. He begged in return for the foundation of a Board of Agriculture. He became the president and Arthur Young the secretary;[37] and the board represented their common aspirations. It was a rather anomalous body, something between a government office and such an institution as the Royal Society; and was supported by an annual grant of £3000. The first aim of the board was to produce a statistical account of England on the plan of the Scottish account. The English clergy, however, were suspicious; they thought, it seems, that the collection of statistics meant an attack upon tithes; and Young's frequent denunciation of tithes as discouraging agricultural improvement suggests some excuse for the belief. The plan had to be dropped; a less thorough-going description of the counties was substituted; and a good many 'Views' of the agriculture of different counties were published in 1794 and succeeding years. The board did its best to be active with narrow means. It circulated information, distributed medals, and brought agricultural improvers together. It encouraged the publication of Erasmus Darwin's Phytologia (1799), and procured a series of lectures from Humphry Davy, afterwards published as Elements of Agricultural Chemistry (1813). Sinclair also claims to have encouraged Macadam (1756-1836), the roadmaker, and Meikle, the inventor of the thrashing-machine. One great aim of the board was to promote enclosures. Young observes in the introductory paper to the Annals that within forty years nine hundred bills had been passed affecting about a million acres. This included wastes, but the greater part was already cultivated under the 'constraint and imperfection of the open field system,' a relic of the 'barbarity of our ancestors.' Enclosures involved procuring acts of parliament -- a consequent expenditure, as Young estimates, of some £2000 in each case;[38] and as they were generally obtained by the great landowners, there was a frequent neglect of the rights of the poor and of the smaller holders. The remedy proposed was a general enclosure act; and such an act passed the House of Commons in 1798, but was thrown out by the Lords. An act was not obtained till after the Reform Bill. Sinclair, however, obtained some modification of the procedure; which, it is said, facilitated the passage of private bills. They became more numerous in later years, though other causes obviously co-operated. Meanwhile, it is characteristic that Sinclair and Young regarded wastes as a backwoodsman regarded a forest. The incidental injury to poor commoners was not unnoticed, and became one of the topics of Cobbett's eloquence. But to the ardent agriculturist the existence of a bit of waste land was a simple proof of barbarism. Sinclair's favourite toast, we are told, was 'May commons become uncommon' -- his one attempt at a joke. He prayed that Epping Forest and Finchley Common might pass under the yoke as well as our foreign enemies. Young is driven out of all patience by the sight of 'fern, ling and other trumpery' in spirit upon Salisbury Plain, which produce all the corn we import.[39] Enfield declares, is a 'real nuisance to the public.'[40] We glad that the zeal for enclosure was not successful its aims; improvers is characteristic.

It is said[41] that Young and Sinclair ruined of the Board of Agriculture by making it a kind of political club. It died in 1822. Sinclair obtained an appointment in Scotland, and continued to labour unremittingly. He carried on a correspondence with all manner of people, including Washington, Eldon, Catholic bishop in Ireland, financiers and agriculturists on the Continent, and the most active economists in England. He suggested a subject for a poem to Scott.[42] He wrote pamphlets about cash-payments, Catholic Emancipation, and the Reform Bill, always disagreeing with all parties, He projected four codes which were to summarise all human knowledge upon health, agriculture, political economy, and religion. The Code of Health (4 vols., 1807) went through six editions; The Code of Agriculture appeared in 1829; but the world has not been enriched by the others. He died at Edinburgh on the 21st September 1835.

I have dwelt so far upon Young because he is the best representative of that 'glorious spirit of improvement' which was transforming the whole social structure. Young's view of the French revolution indicates one marked characteristic of that spirit. He denounces the French seigneur because he is lethargic. He admires the English nobleman because he is energetic. The French noble may even deserve confiscation; but he has not the slightest intention of applying the same remedy in England, where squires and noblemen are the very source of all improvement. He holds that government is everything, and admires the great works of the French despotism: and yet he is a thorough admirer of the liberties enjoyed under the British Constitution, the essential nature of which makes similar works impossible. I need not ask whether Young's logic could be justified; though it would obviously require for justification a thoroughly 'empirical' view, or, in other words, the admission that different circumstances may require totally different institutions. The view, however, which was congenial to the prevalent spirit of improvement must be noted.

It might be stated as a paradox that, whereas in France the most palpable evils arose from the excessive power of the central government, and in England the most palpable evils arose from the feebleness of the central government, the French reformers demanded more government and the English reformers demanded less government. Everything for the people, nothing by the people,' was, as Mr Morley remarks,[43] the maxim of the French economists. The solution seems to be easy. In France, reformers such as Turgot and the economists were in favour of an enlightened despotism, because the state meant a centralised power which might be turned against the aristocracy. Once 'enlightened' it would suppress the exclusive privileges of a class which, doing nothing in return, had become a mere burthen or dead weight encumbering all social development. But in England the privileged class was identical with the governing class. The political liberty of which Englishmen were rightfully proud, the 'rule of law' which made every official responsible to the ordinary course of justice, and the actual discharge of their duties by the governing order, saved it from being the objects of a jealous class hatred. While in France government was staggering under an ever-accumulating resentment against the aristocracy, the contemporary position in England was, on the whole, one of political apathy. The country, though it had lost its colonies, was making unprecedented progress in wealth; commerce, manufactures, and agriculture were being developed by the energy of individuals; and Pitt was beginning to apply Adam Smith's principles to finance. The cry for parliamentary reform died out: neither Whigs nor Tories really cared for it; and the 'glorious spirit of improvement' showed itself in an energy which had little political application. The nobility was not an incubus suppressing individual energy and confronted by the state, but was itself the state; and its individual members were often leaders in industrial improvement. Discontent, therefore, took in the main a different form. Some government was, of course, necessary, and the existing system was too much in harmony, even in its defects, with the social order to provoke any distinct revolutionary sentiment. Englishmen were not only satisfied with their main institutions, but regarded them with exaggerated complacency. But, though there was no organic disorder, there were plenty of abuses to be remedied. The ruling class, it seemed, did its duties in the main, but took unconscionable perquisites in return. If it 'farmed' them, it was right that it should have a beneficial interest in the concern; but that interest might be excessive. In many directions abuses were growing up which required remedy, though not a subversion of the system under which they had been generated. It was not desired -- unless by a very few theorists -- to make any sweeping redistribution of power; but it was eminently desirable to find some means of better regulating many evil practices. The attack upon such practices might ultimately suggest -- as, in fact, it did suggest -- the necessity of far more thorough-going reforms. For the present, however, the characteristic mark of English reformers was this limitation of their schemes, and a mark which is especially evident in Bentham and his followers. I will speak, therefore, of the many questions which were arising, partly for these reasons and partly because the Utilitarian theory was in great part moulded by the particular problems which they had to argue.