THE INDUSTRIAL SPIRIT
I. THE MANUFACTURERS
The history of England during the eighteenth century shows a curious
contrast between the political stagnancy and the great industrial
activity. The great constitutional questions seemed to be settled; and
the statesmen, occupied mainly in sharing power and place, took a very
shortsighted view (not for the first time in history) of the great
problems that were beginning to present themselves. The British empire
in the East was not won by a towering ambition so much as forced upon a
reluctant commercial company by the necessities of its position. The
English race became dominant in America; but the political connection
was broken off mainly because English statesmen could only regard it
from the shopkeeping point of view. When a new world began to arise at
the Antipodes, our rulers saw an opportunity not for planting new
offshoots of European civilisation, but for ridding themselves of the
social rubbish no longer accepted in America. With purblind energy, and
eyes doggedly fixed upon the ground at their feet, the race had somehow
pressed forwards to illustrate the old doctrine that a man never goes so
far as when he does not know whither he is going. While thinking of
earning an honest penny by extending the trade, our 'monied-men' were
laying the foundation of vast structures to be developed by their
descendants.
Politicians, again, had little to do with the great 'industrial
revolution' which marked the last half of the century. The main facts
are now a familiar topic of economic historians; nor need I speak of
them in detail. Though agriculture was still the main industry, and the
landowners almost monopolised political power, an ever growing
proportion of the people was being collected in towns; the artisans were
congregating in large factories; and the great cloud of coal-smoke,
which has never dwindled, was already beginning to darken our skies. The
change corresponds to the difference between a fully developed organism
possessed of a central brain, with an elaborate nervous system, and some
lower form in which the vital processes are still carried on by a number
of separate ganglia. The concentration of the population in the great
industrial centres implied the improvement of the means of commerce; new
organisation of industry provided with a corresponding apparatus of
machinery; and the systematic exploitation of the stored-up forces of
nature. Each set of changes was at once cause and effect, and each was
carried on separately, although in relation to the other. Brindley,
Arkwright, and Watt may be taken as typical representatives of the three
operations. Canals, spinning-jennies, and steam-engines were changing
the whole social order.
The development of means of communication had been slow till the last
half of the century. The roads had been little changed since they had
been first laid down as part of the great network which bound the Roman
empire together. Turnpike acts, sanctioning the construction of new
roads, became numerous. Palmer's application of the stage-coaches to the
carriage of the mails marked an epoch in 1784; and De Quincey's prose
poem, 'The Mail-coach,' shows how the unprecedented speed of Palmer's
coaches, then spreading the news of the first battles in the Peninsula,
had caused them to tyrannise over the opium-eater's dreams. They were
discharging at once a political and an industrial function. Meanwhile
the Bridgewater canal, constructed between 1759 and 1761, was the first
link in a great network which, by the time of the French revolution,
connected the seaports and the great centres of industry. The great
inventions of machinery were simultaneously enabling manufacturers to
take advantage of the new means of communication. The cotton manufacture
sprang up soon after 1780 with enormous rapidity. Aided by the
application of steam (first applied to a cotton mill in 1785) it passed
the woollen trade, the traditional favourite of legislators, and became
the most important branch of British trade. The iron trade had made a
corresponding start. While the steam-engine, on which Watt had made the
first great improvement in 1765, was transforming the manufacturing
system, and preparing the advent of the steamship and railroad, Great
Britain had become the leading manufacturing and commercial country in
the world. The agricultural interest was losing its pre-eminence; and
huge towns with vast aggregations of artisan population were beginning
to spring up with unprecedented rapidity. The change was an
illustration upon a gigantic scale of the doctrines expounded in the
_Wealth of Nations_. Division of labour was being applied to things more
important than pin-making, involving a redistribution of functions not
as between men covered by the same roof, but between whole classes of
society; between the makers of new means of communication and the
manufacturers of every kind of material. The whole industrial community
might be regarded as one great organism. Yet the organisation was formed
by a multitude of independent agencies without any concerted plan. It
was thus a vast illustration of the doctrine that each man by pursuing
his own interests promoted the interests of the whole, and that
government interference was simply a hindrance. The progress of
improvement, says Adam Smith, depends upon 'the uniform, constant, and
uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition,' which often
succeeds in spite of the errors of government, as nature often overcomes
the blunders of doctors. It is, as he infers, 'the highest impertinence
and presumption for kings and ministers to pretend to watch over the
economy of private people' by sumptuary laws and taxes upon imports.[31]
To the English manufacturer or engineer government appeared as a
necessary evil. It allowed the engineer to make roads and canals, after
a troublesome and expensive process of application. It granted patents
to the manufacturer, but the patents were a source of perpetual worry
and litigation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer might look with
complacency upon the development of a new branch of trade; but it was
because he was lying in wait to come down upon it with a new tax or
system of duties.
The men who were the chief instruments of the process were 'self-made';
they were the typical examples of Mr. Smiles's virtue of self-help; they
owed nothing to government or to the universities which passed for the
organs of national culture. The leading engineers began as ordinary
mechanics. John Metcalf (1717-1810), otherwise 'blind Jack of
Knaresborough,' was a son of poor parents. He had lost his sight by
smallpox at the age of six, and, in spite of his misfortune, became a
daring rider, wrestler, soldier, and carrier, and made many roads in the
north of England, executing surveys and constructing the works himself.
James Brindley (1716-1772), son of a midland collier, barely able to
read or write, working out plans by processes which he could not
explain, and lying in bed till they took shape in his brain, a rough
mechanic, labouring for trifling weekly wages, created the canals which
mainly enabled Manchester and Liverpool to make an unprecedented leap in
prosperity. The two great engineers, Thomas Telford (1757-1834), famous
for the Caledonian canal and the Menai bridge; and John Rennie
(1761-1821), drainer of Lincolnshire fens, and builder of Waterloo
bridge and the Plymouth breakwater, rose from the ranks. Telford
inherited and displayed in a different direction the energies of Eskdale
borderers, whose achievements in the days of cattle-stealing were to be
made famous by Scott: Rennie was the son of an East Lothian farmer. Both
of them learned their trade by actual employment as mechanics. The
inventors of machinery belonged mainly to the lower middle classes. Kay
was a small manufacturer; Hargreaves a hand-loom weaver; Crompton the
son of a small farmer; and Arkwright a country barber. Watt, son of a
Greenock carpenter, came from the sturdy Scottish stock, ultimately of
covenanting ancestry, from which so many eminent men have sprung.
The new social class, in which such men were the leaders, held
corresponding principles. They owed whatever success they won to their
own right hands. They were sturdy workers, with eyes fixed upon success
in life, and success generally of course measured by a money criterion.
Many of them showed intellectual tastes, and took an honourable view of
their social functions. Watt showed his ability in scientific inquiries
outside of the purely industrial application; Josiah Wedgwood, in whose
early days the Staffordshire potters had led a kind of gipsy life,
settling down here and there to carry on their trade, had not only
founded a great industry, but was a man of artistic taste, a patron of
art, and a lover of science. Telford, the Eskdale shepherd, was a man of
literary taste, and was especially friendly with the typical man of
letters, Southey. Others, of course, were of a lower type. Arkwright
combined the talents of an inventor with those of a man of business. He
was a man, says Baines (the historian of the cotton trade), who was sure
to come out of an enterprise with profit, whatever the result to his
partners. He made a great fortune, and founded a county family. Others
rose in the same direction. The Peels, for example, represented a line
of yeomen. One Peel founded a cotton business; his son became a baronet
and an influential member of parliament; and his grandson went to
Oxford, and became the great leader of the Conservative party, although
like Walpole, he owed his power to a kind of knowledge in which his
adopted class were generally deficient.
The class which owed its growing importance to the achievements of such
men was naturally imbued with their spirit. Its growth meant the
development of a class which under the old order had been strictly
subordinate to the ruling class, and naturally regarded it with a
mingled feeling of respect and jealousy. The British merchant felt his
superiority in business to the average country-gentleman; he got no
direct share of the pensions and sinecures which so profoundly affected
the working of the political machinery, and yet his highest ambition was
to rise to be himself a member of the class, and to found a family which
might flourish in the upper atmosphere. The industrial classes were
inclined to favour political progress within limits. They were
dissenters because the church was essentially part of the aristocracy;
and they were readiest to denounce the abuses from which they did not
profit. The agitators who supported Wilkes, solid aldermen and rich
merchants, represented the view which was popular in London and other
great cities. They were the backbone of the Whig party when it began to
demand a serious reform. Their radicalism, however, was not thoroughly
democratic. Many of them aspired to become members of the ruling class,
and a shopkeeper does not quarrel too thoroughly with his customers. The
politics of individuals were of course determined by accidents. Some of
them might retain the sympathy of the class from which they sprang, and
others might adopt an even extreme version of the opinions of the class
to which they desired to rise. But, in any case, the divergence of
interest between the capitalists and the labourers was already making
itself felt. The self-made man, it is said, is generally the hardest
master. He approves of the stringent system of competition, of which he
is himself a product. It clearly enables the best man to win, for is he
not himself the best man? The class which was the great seat of movement
had naturally to meet all the prejudices which are roused by change. The
farmers near London, as Adam Smith tells us,[32] petitioned against an
extension of turnpike roads, which would enable more distant farmers to
compete in their market. But the farmers were not the only prejudiced
persons. All the great inventors of machinery, Kay and Arkwright and
Watt, had constantly to struggle against the old workmen who were
displaced by their inventions. Although, therefore, the class might be
Whiggish, it did not share the strongest revolutionary passions. The
genuine revolutionists were rather the men who destroyed the
manufacturer's machines, and were learning to regard him as a natural
enemy. The manufacturer had his own reasons for supporting government.
Our foreign policy during the century was in the long run chiefly
determined by the interests of our trade, however much the trade might
at times be hampered by ill-conceived regulations. It is remarkable that
Adam Smith[33] argues that, although the capitalist is acuter that the
country-gentleman, his acuteness is chiefly displayed by knowing his own
interests better. Those interests, he thinks, do not coincide so much as
the interests of the country-gentleman with the general interests of the
country. Consequently the country-gentleman, though less intelligent,
is more likely to favour a national and liberal policy. The merchant, in
fact, was not a free-trader because he had read Adam Smith or
consciously adopted Smith's principles, but because or in so far as
particular restrictions interfered with him. Arthur Young complains
bitterly of the manufacturers who supported the prohibition to export
English wool, and so protected their own class at the expense of
agriculturists. Wedgwood, though a good liberal and a supporter of
Pitt's French treaty in 1786, joined in protesting against the proposal
for free-trade with Ireland. The Irish, he thought, might rival his
potteries. Thus, though as a matter of fact the growing class of
manufacturers and merchants were inclined in the main to liberal
principles, it was less from adhesion to any general doctrine than from
the fact that the existing restrictions and prejudices generally
conflicted with their plain interests.
Another characteristic is remarkable. Though the growth of manufactures
and commerce meant the growth of great towns, it did not mean the growth
of municipal institutions. On the contrary, as I shall presently have to
notice, the municipalities were sinking to their lowest ebb.
Manufactures, in the first instance, spread along the streams into
country districts: and to the great manufacturer, working for his own
hand, his neighbours were competitors as much as allies. The great
towns, however, which were growing up, showed the general tendencies of
the class. They were centres not only of manufacturing but of
intellectual progress. The population of Birmingham, containing the
famous Soho works of Boulton and Watt, had increased between 1740 and
1780 from 24,000 to 74,000 inhabitants. Watt's partner Boulton started
the 'Lunar Society' at Birmingham.[34] Its most prominent member was
Erasmus Darwin, famous then for poetry which is chiefly remembered by
the parody in the _Anti-Jacobin_; and now more famous as the advocate of
a theory of evolution eclipsed by the teaching of his more famous
grandson, and, in any case, a man of remarkable intellectual power.
Among those who joined in the proceedings was Edgeworth, who in 1768 was
speculating upon moving carriages by steam, and Thomas Day, whose
_Sandford and Merton_ helped to spread in England the educational
theories of Rousseau. Priestley, who settled at Birmingham in 1780,
became a member, and was helped in his investigations by Watt's counsels
and Wedgwood's pecuniary help. Among occasional visitors were Smeaton,
Sir Joseph Banks, Solander, and Herschel of scientific celebrity; while
the literary magnate, Dr. Parr, who lived between Warwick and
Birmingham, occasionally joined the circle. Wedgwood, though too far off
to be a member, was intimate with Darwin and associated in various
enterprises with Boulton. Wedgwood's congenial partner, Thomas Bentley
(1731-1780), had been in business at Manchester and at Liverpool. He had
taken part in founding the Warrington 'Academy,' the dissenting seminary
(afterwards moved to Manchester) of which Priestley was tutor
(1761-1767), and had lectured upon art at the academy founded at
Liverpool in 1773. Another member of the academy was William Roscoe
(1753-1831), whose literary taste was shown by his lives of Lorenzo de
Medici and Leo X., and who distinguished himself by opposing the
slave-trade, then the infamy of his native town. Allied with him in this
movement were William Rathbone and James Currie (1756-1805) the
biographer of Burns, a friend of Darwin and an intelligent physician. At
Manchester Thomas Perceval (1740-1804) founded the 'Literary and
Philosophical Society' in 1780. He was a pupil of the Warrington
Academy, which he afterwards joined on removing to Manchester, and he
formed the scheme afterwards realised by Owens College. He was an early
advocate of sanitary measures and factory legislation, and a man of
scientific reputation. Other members of the society were: John Ferriar
(1761-1815), best known by his _Illustrations of Sterne_, but also a man
of literary and scientific reputation; the great chemist, John Dalton
(1766-1844), who contributed many papers to its transactions; and, for a
short time, the Socialist Robert Owen, then a rising manufacturer. At
Norwich, then important as a manufacturing centre, was a similar circle.
William Taylor, an eminent Unitarian divine, who died at the Warrington
Academy in 1761, had lived at Norwich. One of his daughters married
David Martineau and became the mother of Harriet Martineau, who has
described the Norwich of her early years. John Taylor, grandson of
William, was father of Mrs. Austin, wife of the jurist. He was a man of
literary tastes, and his wife was known as the Madame Roland of Norwich.
Mrs. Opie (1765-1853) was daughter of James Alderson, a physician of
Norwich, and passed most of her life there. William Taylor (1761-1836),
another Norwich manufacturer, was among the earliest English students of
German literature. Norwich had afterwards the unique distinction of
being the home of a provincial school of artists. John Crome
(1788-1821), son of a poor weaver, and John Sell Cotman (1782-1842) were
its leaders; they formed a kind of provincial academy, and exhibited
pictures which have been more appreciated since their death. At Bristol,
towards the end of the century, were similar indications of intellectual
activity. Coleridge and Southey found there a society ready to listen to
their early lectures, and both admired Thomas Beddoes (1760-1808), a
physician, a chemist, a student of German, an imitator of Darwin in
poetry, and an assailant of Pitt in pamphlets. He had married one of
Edgeworth's daughters. With the help and advice of Wedgwood and Watt, he
founded the 'Pneumatic Institute' at Clifton in 1798, and obtained the
help of Humphry Davy, who there made some of his first discoveries. Davy
was soon transported to the Royal Institution, founded at the suggestion
of Count Rumford in 1799, which represented the growth of a popular
interest in the scientific discoveries.
The general tone of these little societies represents, of course, the
tendency of the upper stratum of the industrial classes. In their own
eyes they naturally represented the progressive element of society. They
were Whigs--for 'radicalism' was not yet invented--but Whigs of the left
wing; accepting the aristocratic precedency, but looking askance at the
aristocratic prejudices. They were rationalists, too, in principle, but
again within limits: openly avowing the doctrines which in the
Established church had still to be sheltered by ostensible conformity to
the traditional dogmas. Many of them professed the Unitarianism to which
the old dissenting bodies inclined. '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.
NOTES:
[31] _Wealth of Nations_, bk. ii. ch. iii.
[32] _Wealth of Nations_, bk. i. ch. xi. Sec. 1.
[33] _Ibid._ bk. i. ch. xi. conclusion.
[34] Smiles's _Watt and Boulton_, p. 292.
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,[35] 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 L100 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.[36] 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,[37] '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 unfulfilled 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.'[38] 'The magic
of PROPERTY turns sand to gold.'[39] He is delighted with the comfort of
the small proprietors near Pau, which reminds him of English districts
still inhabited by small yeomen.[40] Passing to a less fortunate region,
he explains that the prince de Soubise has a vast property there. The
property of a grand 'seigneur' is sure to be a desert.[41] 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_'.[42]
Misery in Brittany was due 'to the execrable maxims of despotism or the
equally detestable prejudices of a feudal nobility.'[43] There was
nothing, he said, in the province but 'privileges and poverty,'[44]
privileges of the nobles and poverty of the peasants.
Young was profoundly convinced, moreover, that, as he says more than
once[45] '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.[46] 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.'[47] He
admires the noble public works, the canal of Languedoc, the harbours at
Cherbourg and Havre, and the _ecole veterinaire_ 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[48] 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.[49] 'Banishment alone will force the French nobility to do what
the English do for pleasure--to reside upon and adorn their
estates.'[50] 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[51]; 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),[52] 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.[53] High rents produce industry. The man who doubles
his rents benefits the country more than he benefits himself. Even in
Ireland,[54] 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.[55] 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 reflection. But
Young is essentially an apostle of the 'glorious spirit of
improvement,'[56] 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.'[57] 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,[58] 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.'[59] 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.[60] 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.[61] 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.'[62] 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)[63] was heir to an estate of
sixty thousand acres in Caithness which produced only L2300 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.[64] 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.[65] It gives an account of
every parish in Scotland, and was of great value as supplying a 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;[66] 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 L3000. 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 thoroughgoing 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 road-maker, 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 L2000 in each case;[67] 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' usurping the place of possible arable
fields.[68] He groans in spirit upon Salisbury Plain, which might be
made to produce all the corn we import.[69] Enfield Chase, he declares,
is a 'real nuisance to the public.'[70] We may be glad that the zeal for
enclosure was not successful in all its aims; but this view of
philanthropic and energetic improvers is characteristic.
It is said[71] that Young and Sinclair ruined the Board of Agriculture
by making it a kind of political debating 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 bishops in Ireland, financiers and
agriculturists on the Continent, and the most active economists in
England. He suggested a subject for a poem to Scott.[72] 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,[73] 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 thoroughgoing 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.
NOTES:
[35] Young's _Travels in France_ was republished in 1892, with a preface
and short life by Miss Betham Edwards. She has since (1898) published
his autobiography. See also the autobiographical sketch in the _Annals
of Agriculture_, xv. 152-97. Young's _Farmer's Letters_ first appeared
in 1767; his _Tours_ in the Southern, Northern, and Eastern Counties in
1768, 1770, and 1771; his _Tour in Ireland_ in 1780; and his _Travels in
France_ in 1792. A useful bibliography, containing a list of his many
publications, is appended to the edition of the _Tour in Ireland_ edited
by Mr. A. W. Hutton in 1892.
[36] _Annals_, xv. 166.
[37] _Travels in France_ (1892), p. 184 _n._
[38] _Travels in France_, p. 54.
[39] _Ibid._ p. 109.
[40] _Ibid._ p. 61.
[41] _Ibid._ p. 70.
[42] _Ibid._ p. 279.
[43] _Travels in France_, p. 125.
[44] _Ibid._ p. 131.
[45] _Ibid._ pp. 198, 298.
[46] _Ibid._ pp. 55, 193, 199, 237.
[47] _Ibid._ p. 43.
[48] _Travels in France_, pp. 291-92.
[49] _Ibid._ p. 132.
[50] _Ibid._ p. 66.
[51] _Ibid._ p. 131.
[52] e.g. _Southern Tour_, p. 103; _Northern Tour_, p. 180 (York
Cathedral).
[53] _Northern Tour_, iv. 344, 377.
[54] _Irish Tour_, ii. 114.
[55] _Southern Tour_, p. 326.
[56] _Southern Tour_, p. 22.
[57] _Annals_, i. 380.
[58] _Ibid._ vol, x.
[59] _Ibid._ iv. 17.
[60] _Southern Tour_, p. 262; _Northern Tour_, ii. 412.
[61] _Northern Tour_, iv. 410, etc.
[62] _Irish Tour_, ii. 118-19.
[63] _Memoirs of Sir John Sinclair_, by his son. 2 vols., 1837.
[64] _Memoirs_, i. 338.
[65] _A New Statistical Account_, replacing this, appeared in
twenty-four volumes from 1834 to 1844.
[66] He was president for the first five years, and again, from 1806
till 1813. For an account of this, see Sir Ernest Clarke's _History of
the Board of Agriculture_, 1898.
[67] _Northern Tour_, i. 222-32.
[68] _Northern Tour_, ii. 186.
[69] _Southern Tour_, p. 20.
[70] _Northern Tour_, iii. 365.
[71] Arthur Young had a low opinion of Sinclair, whom he took to be a
pushing and consequential busybody, more anxious to make a noise than to
be useful. See Young's _Autobiography_ (1898), pp. 243, 315, 437. Sir
Ernest Clarke points out the injury done by Sinclair's hasty and
blundering extravagance; but also shows that the board did great service
in stimulating agricultural improvement.
[72] Scott's _Letters_, i. 202.
[73] Essay on 'Turgot.' See, in Daire's Collection of the _Economistes_,
the arguments of Quesnay (p. 81), Dupont de Nemours (p. 360), and
Mercier de la Riviere in favour of a legal (as distinguished from an
'arbitrary') despotism.