'Unitarianism,'said shrewd old Erasmus Darwin,'is a feather-bed for a dying Christian.'But at present such men as Priestley and Price were only so far on the road to a thorough rationalism as to denounce the corruptions of Christianity,as they denounced abuses in politics,without anticipating a revolutionary change in church and state.Priestley,for example,combined 'materialism'and 'determinism'with Christianity and a belief in miracles,and controverted Horsley upon one side and Paine on the other.
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 ?100to 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 1779he returned to Bradfield,where he soon afterwards came into possession of his paternal estate,which became his permanent home.In 1784he 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 1791his circulation was only 350copies.(6)Meanwhile his acquaintance with the duc de Liancourt led to tours in France from 1788to 1790.His Travels in France,first published in 1792,has become a classic.In 1793Young 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 1797permanently 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 manu,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 PROPERTYturns 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?'