CHAPTER IX. 



ARTHUR YOUNG AND THE DIFFUSION OF 

 KNOWLEDGE. 1760-1800. 



The counties distinguished for the best farming : Hertfordshire, Essex, Suffolk, 

 Norfolk, Leicestershire : the low general standard ; Arthur Young ; his 

 crusade against bad farming, and the hindrances to progress ; waste 

 land ; the " Goths and Vandals " of open-field farmers : want of capital 

 and education ; insecurity of tenure ; prejudices and traditional practices ; 

 impassable roads ; rapid development of manufacture demands a change 

 of agricultural front : Young's advocacy of capitalist landlords and large 

 tenant-farmers. 



During the first three quarters of the eighteenth century many- 

 advances had been made in the theory, and some in the practice, of 

 agriculture. Alternations of crops and the management of live- 

 stock Mere better understood. But progress was still confined to 

 locahties, if not to individuals. Only in such counties as Hertford- 

 shire, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Leicestershire was a fair standard 

 of farmmg generally estabHshed. The superior enterprise of these 

 favoured districts was due to various causes, and was displayed in 

 different directions. 



Without any special fertihty of soil, Hertfordshire had for the 

 last hundred years enjoyed the reputation of being the best com 

 county in England. To some extent it owed its superiority to the 

 neighbourhood of London. But Middlesex, which shared the same 

 advantage, was relatively backward. In Hertfordshire roads were 

 above the average. In Middlesex turnpike roads, in spite of a 

 large revenue from tolls, are described as " very bad." On the 

 main road from Tyburn to Uxbridge, in the winter of 1797-8, there 

 was but " one passable track, and that was less than six feet wide, 

 and was eight inches deep in fluid mud. All the rest of the road 

 was from a foot to eighteen inches deep in adhesive mud." Hert- 

 fordshire, which had been to a great extent covered with forest, 



