304 Memoir of Arthur Young, Esq. 



How little reason, therefore, for reproaching me with sentiments 

 contrary to those I published before the 10th of August! I am 

 not changeable, but steady and consistent ; the same principles 

 which directed me to approve the Revolution in its commence- 

 ment, the principles of real liberty, led me to detest it after 

 the 10th of August. The reproach of changeableness, or 

 something worse, belongs entirely to those who did not then 

 change their opinion, but approved the Republic, as they had 

 approved the limited Monarchy". It deserves to be here re- 

 corded, that in this political pamphlet Mr. Young first recom- 

 mended a Horse Militia, a force which was afterwards called 

 the Yeomanry Cavalry. He was frequently complimented as 

 the original projector of so valuable a plan, and his health was 

 the first toast drank at their public dinners. He entered him- 

 self, as a private, into a corps established in the vicinity of 

 Bury St. Edmonds, of which the present Marquis Cornwallis, 

 at that time Lord Broome, was the Colonel. Shortly after this 

 period, animated as he always was by the spirit of adventure, 

 he could not resist an opportunity that occurred, for realizing 

 the favourite speculation he had so long entertained — that of 

 cultivating a large tract of waste land. He accordingly com- 

 pleted the purchase of 4,400 acres of waste, in Yorkshire. 

 But his fates had decreed other things for him : a new scene,- 

 of a very different description, opened. The Board of Agricul- 

 ture was established in the August of 1793, and he was im- 

 mediately appointed its Secretary. It has been asserted, with 

 much confidence, that this situation was given to him by the 

 Government, as a reward for his political pamphlet, — but this 

 is not true. An individual, it must be granted, is rarely ap- 

 pointed to an official situation on account of his possessing, in an 

 eminent degree, those qualifications which its duties require ; but 

 in the instance of Mr. Young, this was undoubtedly the fact ; 

 his general and profound knowledge in agriculture was the 

 only circumstance that marked him as the most proper person 

 to fill a situation in every respect so important and honourable. 

 " The gratification," says he, " of being elected into so re- 

 spectable a situation, in which opportunities of still giving 



