The Secretaryship and its drawbacks—Social compensations—Illness and death of Elizabeth Hoole—Letters of Jeremy Bentham and others—A visit to Burke—Home travels—Enclosures.
The Board of Agriculture, meeting in February, arranged the President’s plan for the attendance of their officers. By these laws all the officers of the Board were bound to attend, with no other exception than the months of August, September and October, with one month at Christmas and three weeks at Easter. These laws, ready cut and dried when the Board met, were adopted with no other alterations than such as the President himself had made in them, previously to their being presented at the meeting. Lord Hawke had examined the rules and orders of many societies, and found that in all letters communications were addressed to the Secretaries, and answers given by them. Sir John Sinclair struck this out, and directed all such communications to be to the President (himself), and for him also to sign all letters. This at once converted the Secretary into nothing more than a first clerk. I saw not at first the tendency of the alterations; but I soon felt their effect. All letters were dictated by the Secretary and written in a book; this book was altered and corrected at the will of the President, and such alterations made as in respect of agriculture were absurd enough; the whole done in such a manner as not to be very pleasing.
In addition to this, Sir John Sinclair gave the Board the use of his house, which ensured another circumstance hostile to my feelings. There was only one room for transacting the business, by the Secretary, under-Secretary, two clerks, to which Sir J. after added the constant attendance of an attorney, for assisting in the business of a general Enclosing Act, about which the President busied himself some years in vain. As I was determined to pass all the vacations at my farm in Suffolk, six journeys of myself and servants became necessary, and caused a considerable expense. I also was compelled to hire lodgings at the expense of two or two guineas and a half per week, and when I experienced the full career[158] of all these circumstances, I deliberated repeatedly and carefully with myself, whether it would not be cheaper to me to throw up the employment. Long after, upon review of the whole, I was amazed that I had not done it, more especially as my plan for settling on the moors in Yorkshire was offered to my choice. I was infinitely disgusted with the inconsiderate manner in which Sir John Sinclair appointed the persons who drew up the original reports, men being employed who scarcely knew the right end of a plough; and the President one day desired I would accompany him with one of these men, a half-pay officer out of employment, to call on Lord Moira to request his assistance in the Leicestershire Report, when this person told his Lordship that he was out of employment and should like a summer’s excursion. To do him justice, he did not know anything of the matter. Still, however, he was appointed, and amused himself with his excursion to Leicester. But the most curious circumstance of effrontery was, that the greater number of the reporters were appointed, and actually travelled upon the business before the first meeting of the Board took place, under the most preposterous of all ideas—that of surveying the whole Kingdom and printing the Reports in a single year; by which manœuvre Sir John thought he should establish a great reputation for himself. Consequently by his sole authority, who could not possibly know whether the members of the Board would approve or not such a plan. I was a capital idiot not to absent myself sufficiently to bring the matter to a question, and leave them to turn me out if they pleased. Mr. Pitt would probably have interfered and effected the object I wanted, and, if not, would have provided for me in a better way. However, I made use of the opportunities that offered to frequent the company of those that were agreeable to me; for a part of the time was pretty regularly passed at the conversaziones of Mrs. Matthew Montagu and the Countess of Bristol, where I met an assemblage of persons remarkable for every characteristic of the bas-bleu mixed with great numbers of the highest rank. [I was] also at many similar parties upon a smaller scale at Mr. Charles Coles’, the intimate friend of Soame Jenyns, and to whom he left the property of his works. The petits soupers at Mrs. Matthew Montagu’s, and to which she asked a selection of eight or nine persons, were very pleasant, the conversations interesting, and this select number more agreeable than I ever found full rooms. On my first coming to town in the spring of 1794, I enquired of several members of the Board whether there was not a farmers’ club in London, and was surprised that there never had been any institution of the kind. I determined to endeavour at establishing one, and spoke to the Duke of Bedford and the Earls of Egremont and Winchilsea, who much approved the idea, and applying also to a few more, I directed cards to be sent them from the Thatched House Tavern,[159] in order to establish a club. This meeting was fully attended, and a book being called for, the club was instituted, and several rules entered, and the meetings appointed once a fortnight during the sittings of Parliament. This club became very fashionable, and applications to be elected were very numerous, from the members of both Houses of Parliament; and it subsists to this day, but has for some time been very ill attended. This was occasioned by too free an election of all who offered. While the club was limited to fifty members it was well attended, but afterwards such numbers were received, and with so much facility, as greatly to injure the establishment. I have one remark to make upon clubs; the life and soul of them is limitation to a selected few, and to blackball the great mass of applicants, selecting merely such as will form a very valuable addition to the society, which probably may not amount to more than one in twenty. The annual subscription was two guineas: one to the house, one to form a fund at the disposition of the club. The latter gradually accumulated till it amounted to 700l. or 800l. Both Sir John Sinclair and I were strenuous that this might be applied to some useful purpose, and with difficulty we got an appropriation of fifty guineas as a reward for the best plough that could be produced; but the money assigned to advertisements being much too small, the offer was unknown, and no plough produced.
A member once proposed that the 800l. might be given to charitable institutions; but this was negatived in an instant, and the sum is still left (1812) unemployed in the funds.
While the club flourished the members who most generally attended were the Dukes of Bedford, Buccleugh, Montrose, the Earls of Egremont, Winchester and Darnley, the Lords of Wentworth, Somerville, de Dunstanville, Sheffield, &c. &c.
I often dined at Charles Coles’, where I met repeatedly Jacob Bryant,[160] Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. York, Mrs. Garrick, Hannah More, Mrs. Orde and Soame Jenyns. The conversation at these parties on the publications of the day, anecdotes of the time, with the conduct of many of the great men of the age, was usually very interesting. Alas! alas! how few of these persons are now left. I was very eager in listening to every word that fell from Hannah More, though not nearly so much so as I should have been many years after.
I had an incessant round of dinners and many evening parties, and generally with people of the highest rank and consequence, but I was not pleased, being discontented with my employment, and disgusted with the frivolous business of the Board, which seemed to me engaged in nothing that could possibly produce the least credit with the public. After five months’ residence at London, I went to the Duke of Bedford’s at Woburn on my way to Bradfield, spending some days very agreeably in company that could not fail of being interesting.
This year my second daughter Elizabeth, who, as I have mentioned before, was married to the Rev. John Hoole, died of consumption. She was of a most amiable, gentle temper, and in a resigned frame of mind, which gave me much satisfaction. The last visit I paid her at Abinger, in Surrey, she was very weak, yet not suspected to be so near her end. But at the last parting with me, she did it in so feeling and affectionate a manner as seemed to imply that she thought she should see me no more. It made me, for a time, extremely melancholy, which was shaken off with great difficulty. I took a tour into Hampshire, where I passed several days with Mr. Poulett at Sombourne, taking an account of the agriculture of that district, the result of which examination was printed as an appendix to the original Hampshire Report.
On the meeting of the Board in 1793, Sir John Sinclair had particularly requested me to draw up a Report for the County of Suffolk, to effect which I took several journeys into different parts of the county at some expense, and formed the Report which was printed in 1794. I never executed any work more commended in Suffolk than this. I had no remuneration.
Letters received this year:—
From Jeremy Bentham, Esq., enquiries into the landed property of Great Britain and into the rental and value of houses:—
‘Dear Sir,—Permit my ignorance to draw upon your science on an occasion that happens just now to be a very material one to me. I have a sort of floating recollection of a calculation, so circumstanced, either in point of authority or argument, as to carry weight with it, in which the total value of the landed property in this country (Scotland, I believe, included) was reckoned at a thousand millions, and that of the movable property at either a thousand millions or twelve hundred millions. Public debt did not come, I think, at least, it ought not to come, into the account; it being only so much owned by one part of the proprietors of the two thousand or the two thousand two hundred millions to another.
‘Upon searching your book on France, which was the source from whence I thought I had taken the idea, I can find no calculation of the value of the movable property, nor even of the immovable in an explicit form; on the contrary, in the instance of the immovable, I find suppositions with which any such estimate appears to be incompatible. The land tax at four shillings, I find, you suppose, were it to be equal all over the country, would be equivalent to as much as three shillings, on which supposition the rental (the tax of four shillings producing no more than two thousand millions) would amount to no more than 13,000,000l. nor consequently the value, at so many years’ purchase, say twenty-eight, to more than three hundred and sixty-four millions; or at thirty, to three hundred and ninety millions; to which, in order to complete the calculation of the landed property of Great Britain, that of Scotland would have to be added.
‘The population of the three kingdoms you reckon in two places at eleven millions; but in another place at fifteen. Is the latter a slip of the pen? or, in the two former places, was only two kingdoms (England and Scotland) in your view, though three are mentioned? A circumstance that seems to favour the latter supposition is, that the population of Ireland is well known (if I do not much misrecollect) from recent and authentic sources to be a little more than four millions; and as Scotland turns out to contain a million and a half, this would leave nine and a half millions for England, which, I should suppose, would quadrate in round numbers with Mr. Howlett’s calculations, to which we refer; a book which, from forgetfulness, I have never made myself master of, and to which, being in the country, I have no speedy means of recurring.
‘Now what I wish for is as follows: (1) a calculation (or, I should rather say, the result) of the value of the landed property of Great Britain reckoned at [so many] years’ purchase, two prices—a peace price and a war price—could they be respectively of sufficient permanence to be ascertained, would be of use.
‘(2) A calculation of the value of the personal, i.e. immovable property of Great Britain.
‘(3) The amount of the population of Great Britain.
‘What I am a petitioner for is the benefit of your judgment and authority upon the three several subjects; by reference, if there be any other person’s calculation that you are satisfied with; otherwise from your own notes; and, in either case, a word or two just to indicate the sources from which they are taken would be an additional help and satisfaction.
‘The occasion of the trouble I am attempting to give you I expressly forbear mentioning; not only for want of space and time, but more particularly that it may be impossible, and might, upon occasion, be known to be impossible, that the response of the Oracle should have received any bias from the consideration of the purpose for which it was consulted.
‘I am, dear sir, with never failing esteem and regard,
‘Dear Sir,—A thousand thanks for your kind letter—sorry you should fancy you have been bathing[161] for health—hope it was not true—only idleness—we can’t afford to have you otherwise than well.
‘Must prefer[162] you once more, “Rental of England twenty-four millions.” Good! but houses, such as those in town, and others that have a separate rent, are included? I suppose not; since for them you would have given a separate and different price in number of years’ purchase.
‘In one of your tours you guess this article at five millions. Do you abide by that guess? I think the number must have increased since then considerably; that was, I believe, about twenty years ago. London and the environs must since then have increased, I should think, at least a quarter of a million. How many years’ purchase would you reckon houses at, upon an average, old and young together? Shall we say sixteen? I should think, at the outside.
‘A. Young, Esq.’
The two following letters are from Mrs. Hoole, Dr. Burney’s favourite, Miss Bessy, to her father:—
‘Dear Sir,—We came hither from Lynn near three weeks since, as Mr. Hoole informed you. We are in very warm and comfortable lodgings, and the woman of the house is very attentive and obliging. The air of this place is very mild and very moist, but they tell us the healthiest of any upon the coast. Mr. Hoole has been on to Exmouth, which, upon the whole, he does not like so well. We do not find that Devonshire is cheaper the further you go, but the contrary, at least on the coast.
‘With regard to myself, I do not find I am any better for this journey, indeed I have had more fever and cough since I came here than ever I had. I am at present better, but I know that is owing to a very strict regimen which I have lately taken to. The weather has been very unfavourable, for though it has not been cold we have had almost constantly either rain or wind. We have been absent from home near nine weeks, and Mr. H. must very soon return to his curacy; he will either take me with him or leave me here, and we wish very much to know what you advise, considering all circumstances.
‘This place is certainly warmer than Surrey, but we have heard here, as at Lynn, that it sometimes proves unfavourable in consumptive cases. I do not think Abinger at all in fault; I have been well or better there than anywhere. But I am not unwilling to be left here, if it should still be thought advisable. Will you have the goodness to write as soon as you can, as we shall not determine till we hear? Mr. Hoole has had but one letter from you about a month ago. This I mention lest you should have sent any which may have miscarried.
‘Perhaps you may like to know something of the price of provisions: Meat 4½d. per lb.; poultry is reasonable; chickens from 2s. to 2s. 6d. a couple; milk 2d. a quart; butter 10d. per lb.’
‘I fear this journey will be of no avail. I do not think our dear Bessy is in any immediate danger, but I much fear this cruel disease is gradually preying on her strength.
‘My dear Sir,—I was very sorry to find from your letter that what I had written had made you uneasy; I am certain you think me worse than I am; indeed it is very foolish to write my symptoms to my friends, as they give way perhaps, or some of them, in a short time, as is my case. I am now quite free from pain, and can sleep on one side as well as the other; I think the last blister was of use. I have been twice in the warm bath since Mr. Hoole went. My cough must have its course.
‘I had a very kind letter from Agnes yesterday; she offers, if she can get permission, to come and stay with me until Mr. Hoole returns, and adds, if she cannot, Mrs. Forbes says she is at liberty, and would willingly come; but I would not bring them down upon any account, as I am more comfortably settled than anybody would suppose, and I am sure Mr. Hoole will be back in a short time.
‘Sidmouth is certainly very mild; we have had no cold winds, but this clear weather suits me better than that warm moist weather we had in February. But I cannot walk by the seaside; there is always wind, and it seems colder than anywhere else.
‘I would not blame Mrs. F. in the least; I might have been the same or worse anywhere; if anything in the air disagreed with me, it was the moisture. We have no post from hence, either Monday or Tuesday. I wrote to Mr. Hoole last Sunday, or would have answered yours sooner. The quickness, or rather rapidity, with which our letters arrive from town, seems surprising—a letter put in one night we have the next. It is not the custom indeed to deliver them at night, as the post comes in so late as nine, but if you send they will give you them. At Lynn, which is about the same distance from town, they deliver them at six in the evening, but we have here a cross-post to send for them nine miles.
‘I beg you will not think me worse than I am, and believe me,
‘My dear Sir,—I am to thank you for two letters, which should not have lain unanswered if a retirement like mine would have furnished me with any materials. However, I must take notice of your way of arguing. You say “the people in France are starved, and assignats are destroyed,” with significant dashes. You told me just the same in 1793 and 1794, and venture it once more. Assuredly you seem to reason like the old wizard Tiresias in Horace, “Quicquid dicam aut erit aut non.” Whether your predictions be verified or not, you assume, like Tiresias, to speak the truth.
‘I always thought with you, that Mr. Pitt would receive no real benefit from his new friends; but I have heard the Duke of Grafton say that he would not have entered on the war if he had not been able to detach some from the Opposition. If this be so, there is great reason to lament that he could detach them.
‘We have received here the Bishop of Llandaff’s speech on the Duke of Bedford’s motion, published by Debrett. It amazed me to find that the Bishop of Durham ventured to speak after him. A gentleman who heard them both says that Watson’s was rich, clouted cream, and Barrington’s thin, meagre, blue skim milk, frothed up with an egg, but with so weak a froth that it rose only to fall instantly. We are told that after Æschines was banished, in consequence of Demosthenes’ speech de coronâ, one of Æschines’ friends carried to him in his banishment a copy of Demosthenes’ speech; on which the former said, “But what if you had heard it?”
‘Two fellows of this college, who heard Watson, bear the same ample testimony to the excellent manner in which he delivered it.
‘You tell me “that our situation is prosperous beyond all example;” I should think so too if it were unnecessary to multiply loans. The complaints of the dearness of the necessaries of life seem to pervade the whole island, and I fear they must still be dearer. If we be forced to persist in this war (and how are we to get out of it, it is difficult to see) the middle class of the people, of which you and I form a part, must be driven down to the lower. They hold it is a principle not to tax the lower, but to tax luxuries, so that the middle class will be forced to abandon everything but necessaries, and then the upper class must pay all. This, to use your words, “must render us prosperous beyond all example.” I rather accede to Charles Coles’ declaration in his last letter to me: “Alas! our glory is gone to decay.” A day or two ago I was looking into the famous pamphlet of my old friend, Israel Mauduit,[163] on the German war, in which I stumbled on the following sentence, very applicable to our entering into this just war to save the Dutch: “Is Britain to make itself the general knight errant of Europe, to rescue oppressed States, and exhaust itself in order to save men in spite of themselves, who will not do anything towards their own deliverance?” Adieu!
1796.—In the spring of this year I waited on Mr. Pitt, by his appointment, in order to answer some enquiries of his relative to the propriety of any regulations by Parliament of the price of labour.
I answered all his enquiries, and could not but admire the wonderful quickness of his apprehension of all those collateral difficulties which I started, and of which he seemed in a moment to comprehend the full extent. I found him hostile to the idea.
March.—Among various dinners [was] at Mr. Burke’s and at Mrs. Barrington’s parties. In May dinners at Duke of Bedford’s, Duke of Buccleugh’s, and Mr. Jenkinson and Lady Louisa’s; her manner is not the most agreeable, [but] she has ease and elegance. I have long known her at Ickworth.
May 1.—For some time past the following advertisement has appeared in many of the London papers: ‘Speedily will be published a letter from the Bight Hon. Edmund Burke to Arthur Young, Esq., Secretary to the Board of Agriculture, on some projects talked of in Parliament, for regulating the price of labour.’ The appearance of this advertisement induced Sir John Sinclair to write to Mr. Burke to propose to him that he should undertake to draw up for the Board the chapter of a general Report which was intended to treat on the subject of labour and provisions.
The question in the House of Commons was decided before the publication could appear, and it was supposed that Mr. Burke had, in consequence, abandoned the intention of publishing his ideas. But Sir John, not having received any answer, or, at least, any that was satisfactory to him, requested me to take his chariot and go to Gregory’s, in order that I might discover whether that celebrated character continued his intention of throwing his thoughts upon paper.
I reached Mr. Burke’s before breakfast, and had every reason to be pleased with my reception.
‘Why, Mr. Young, it is many years since I saw you, and, to the best of my recollection, you have not suffered the smallest change; you look as young as you did sixteen years ago. You must be very strong; you have no belly; your form shows lightness; you have an elastic mind.’
I wished to myself that I could have returned anything like the compliment, but I was shocked to see him so broken, so low, and with such expressions of melancholy. I almost thought that I was come to see the greatest genius of the age in ruin.
And I had every reason to think, from all that passed on this visit, that the powers of his mind had suffered considerably.
He introduced me to his brother, Mr. W. Burke, to Mrs. B., and to the Count de la Tour du Pin, an emigrant philosopher and naturalist.
After breakfast he took me a sauntering walk for five hours over his farm, and to a cottage where a scrap of land had been stolen from the waste. I was glad to find his farm in good order, and doubly so to hear him remark that it was his only amusement, except the attention which he paid to a school in the vicinity for sixty children of noble emigrants. His conversation was remarkably desultory, a broken mixture of agricultural observations, French madness, price of provisions, the death of his son, the absurdity of regulating labour, the mischief of our Poor-laws, and the difficulty of cottagers keeping cows. An argumentative discussion of any opinion seemed to distress him, and I, therefore, avoided it. And his discourse was so scattered and interrupted by varying ideas, that I could bring away but few of his remarks that were clearly defined.
Speaking on public affairs he said that he never looked at a newspaper; ‘but if anything happens to occur which they think will please me, I am told of it.’ I observed there was strength of mind in this resolution. ‘Oh, no!’ he replied, ‘it is mere weakness of mind.’ It appeared evident that he would not publish upon the subject which brought me to Gregory’s; but he declared himself to be absolutely inimical to any regulation whatever by law; that all such interference was not only unnecessary but would be mischievous. He observed that the supposed scarcity was extremely ill understood, and that the consumption of the people was a clear proof of it; this, in his neighbourhood, was not lessened in the material articles of bread, meat, and beer, which he learnt by a very careful examination of many bakers, butchers, and excisemen; nor had the poor been distressed further than what resulted immediately from that improvidence which was occasioned by the Poor-laws.
Mr. Burke had not read Lord Sheffield’s Memoirs of Gibbon. On my observing that Mr. Gibbon declares himself of the same opinion with him on the French Revolution, he said that Gibbon was an old friend of his, and he knew well that before he (Mr. G.) died, that he heartily repented of the anti-religious part of his work for contributing to free mankind from all restraint on their vices and profligacy, and thereby aiding so much the spirit which produced the horrors that blackened the most detestable of all revolutions.
Upon my mentioning Monsieur de Mounier and Lally Tollendal, he exclaimed, ‘I wish they were both hanged!’
He seemed to bear hard upon the Duke de Liancourt, and to allude indistinctly to some report of my having opened an hospitable door to that nobleman, and having received a bad return. I defended the duke, and had not the conversation been interrupted I should have discovered what he meant by the remark. The same observation has met my ear on other occasions, but was never explained.
Mrs. Crewe arrived just before dinner, and though she exerted herself with that brilliancy of imagination which renders her conversation so interesting, it was not sufficient to raise the drooping spirits of Mr. Burke; it hurt me to see the languid manner in which he lounged rather than sat at table, his dress entirely neglected, and his manner quite dejected; yet he tried once or twice to rally, and once even to pun. Mrs. Crewe, observing that Thelwel was to stand for Norwich, said it would be horrid for Mr. Wyndham to be turned out by such a man. ‘Aye,’ he replied, ‘that would not tell well.’
She laughed at him in the style of condemning a bad pun. Somebody said it was a fair one, he said it was neither very bad nor good.
He gave more attention to her account of Charles Fox than to any other part of her conversation. She spoke slightingly of him, and gave us some account of his life at Mrs. Armstead’s. She says he lives very little in the world, or in any general society, for years past; that his pleasure is to be at the head of a little society of ten or twelve toad eaters, and seems to contract his mind to such a situation.
The conversation would have become more interesting had not Mrs. Crewe been so full of a plan for Ladies’ Subscriptions for the Emigrants, and consulting him so much on the means of securing the money from the fangs of the Bishop of St. Pol de Léon, whose part, however, Mr. Burke took steadily. This business was so discussed as to preclude much other conversation. Mr. Burke has been at Gregory’s twenty-nine years; and I was pleased to remark that he lived on the same moderate plan of life which I witnessed here five-and-twenty years ago.
Mem. ‘To search for that visit.’[164]
My visit on the whole was interesting. I am glad once more to have seen and conversed with the man who I hold to possess the greatest and most brilliant parts of any person of the age in which he lived. Whose conversation has often fascinated me; whose eloquence has charmed; whose writings have delighted and instructed the world; and whose name will without question descend to the latest posterity. But to behold so great a genius so depressed with melancholy, stooping with infirmity of body, feeling the anguish of a lacerated mind, and sinking to the grave under accumulated misery; to see all this in a character I venerate, and apparently without resource or comfort, wounded every feeling of my soul, and I left him the next day almost as low-spirited as himself.
In May the Duke of Buccleugh carried me to see Mr. Secretary Dundas’s farm at Wimbledon, where I was to give my opinion of the mode of draining it. I found his people throwing money away like fools. They know nothing of the matter. This duke is another determined farmer, and seems to like conversing on no other subject.
This year I undertook a journey through the western counties, through Devon into Cornwall, returning by Somersetshire, and published the register of it in the ‘Annals of Agriculture.’ I happened to be at Exeter at the time of the quarter sessions, and dined with thirty magistrates, Mr. Leigh, clerk of the House of Commons, being chairman. I did not know him personally, and joined more warmly in a conversation on the Enclosure Bill,[165] than I should have done had I known that I was speaking to a person so much interested against it. Mr. Leigh was very decided in his opposition to the measure, asserting that there was no protection for property in any other mode of proceeding, which had been so long the established custom. I very eagerly refuted this observation till some gentleman present spoke to Mr. Leigh, alluding to his official character. This was one proof of what I had often heard, that the officers of the two Houses of Parliament were of all others the most determined opposers of that measure. The reason is obvious; they have very considerable fees on the passing of every private Act,[166] and the clerks of the House have a further benefit which might not be compensated in any equivalent that might be given them; because they solicit many of the bills. Still, as there is so plain a precedent which has existed for many years in the case of the Speaker of the House, who has 6,000l. per annum instead of all fees, it seems no difficult matter to give an equal equivalent to the clerks for all their profits, including what they might make as solicitors.