138 History of the E^tglish Landed Interest. 



labour in agriculture ; and, on the other hand, Stewart warn- 

 ing us that, unless the husbandman produced more than he 

 consumed himself, he was of no use to his neighbours. Arthur 

 Young, whose wide and practical knowledge of agriculture 

 constitutes him an authority, suggests the possibility that 

 these two ends are reconcilable.^ In fact, he tries to prove that 

 no individual could feed himself without in some way assisting 

 his fellows. He supposes the two instances from real life that 

 he believed approached- nearest to the conditions, where Sir 

 James Stewart's warning would be applicable. One might be 

 found in the vine-producing districts of France, where land 

 situated about the villages was divided into small lots which 

 belonged to the peasants. The greatest frugality prevailed, 

 the best process of cultivation possible was practised, the 

 smallest weed utilised as cattle fodder, and the entire produce 

 consumed on the holding. But though nothing was sold, 

 something, such as salt and manufactures, was required ; and 

 the peasant, hiring out the spare time of himself and his family 

 for vine-dressing or other land requirements, where a surplus 

 of production demanded extra labour, was just able to earn 

 sufficient to buy such extraneous wants and pay the State 

 taxation. A similar case might be imagined in England, where 

 a freeholder squeezed out of his estate just sufficient to support 

 and clothe himself and family. It might be said that their 

 respective countries would have suffered no loss had both 

 owners and holdings been swallowed up by an earthquake. 

 But in the one case the services of the vine-dresser were lost 

 to his nation, and in the other case the birth of children to 

 the freeholder, which might have helped to man his country's 



* Political Essays Concerning the Present State of the British Empire. 

 Anon. London: Strahan & Cadell, 1772. This work Las only recently 

 been attributed to Arthur Young {vide Catalogue British Museum, 1892). 

 Through the kindness of Mr. H. Ward, of the British Museum, I have been 

 enabled to trace back to its source the reason for thus fathering it on 

 Young. Mr. P. Anderson (also of the British Museum) has recently 

 written a Bibliographj' of Young for Mr. A. W. Hutton's edition of the 

 Tour in Ireland, in which he includes the above work on the authority 

 of an article in the Quarterly Eevieic of Science, etc. (vol. ix., J. Murray, 

 1820), written by Young's physician, Dr. Paris, 



