THE SECRETARYSHIP, 1794-95-96
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 700_l._ or 800_l._ 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 800_l._ 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:—
‘Hendon, Middlesex: Sept. 1794.
‘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 13,000,000_l._ 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,
‘Yours ever,
‘JEREMY BENTHAM.’
‘Q.I.P.: Sept. 30, 1794.
‘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.
‘I am, dear Sir,
‘Your much obliged,
‘JEREMY BENTHAM.
‘A. Young, Esq.’
The two following letters are from Mrs. Hoole, Dr. Burney’s
favourite, Miss Bessy, to her father:—
_To Arthur Young, Esq._
‘Sidmouth: Feb. 22, 1794.
‘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.
‘Believe me, dear Sir,
‘Your affectionate Daughter,
‘ELIZABETH HOOLE.
‘Perhaps you may like to know something of the price of
provisions: Meat 4½d. per lb.; poultry is reasonable; chickens
from 2_s._ to 2_s._ 6_d._ a couple; milk 2_d._ a quart; butter
10_d._ per lb.’
_Postscript from Mr. Hoole_
‘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.
‘S. H.’
‘Sidmouth: March 18, 1794.
‘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,
‘Your affectionate Daughter,
‘ELIZABETH HOOLE.’
_From J. Symonds, Esq._
‘Cambridge: March 27, 1795.
‘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!
‘Yours sincerely,
‘J. SYMONDS.’
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 6,000_l._ 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.
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Footnote 158:
Career, general course of action or procedure.—_Webster._
Footnote 159:
This appears to have been the place lately known as the Thatched
House Club, St. James’s Street, Piccadilly.
Footnote 160:
1715-1804. Author of numerous works on speculative history, in one
of which he denied the existence of Troy.
Footnote 161:
Probably an allusion to A. Y.’s habit of air baths.
Footnote 162:
Prefer, to set forth, propose.—_Webster._
Footnote 163:
Israel Mauduit, son of a Dissenting minister; at first the same,
afterwards merchant; published _Considerations on the German War_,
1760, &c. &c. See _Chalmers’ Biog. Dict._
Footnote 164:
No note is to be found among papers concerning this visit.
Footnote 165:
Enclosure Bill. ‘At the Revolution of 1688 more than half the
kingdom was believed to consist of moorland, forest, and fen, and
vast commons and wastes covered the greater part of England north
of the Humber. But the numerous Enclosure Bills which began with
the reign of George II., and especially marked that of his
successor, changed the whole face of the country. Ten thousand
square miles of untilled land have been [? had been] added, under
their operation, to the area of cultivation.’—Green’s _History of
the English People_.
Footnote 166:
Abolished (saving the rights of the then holders of office) in
1812. 52 Geo. III. c. xi.
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