192 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



endorse, ' have reason to think the government of this country 

 the first in the world ; the middle classes bear the brunt.' 

 Perhaps to-day ' men of large fortune ' have altered their 

 opinion and only * the poor ' are satisfied. However, he only 

 visited France, and gave us his vivid picture of that country 

 before the great revolution. 



In 1793 the Board of Agriculture was formed, and Young 

 was made secretary with a salary of ;^40o a year. 



About 1 810 he wrote that the preceding half-century had 

 been by far the most interesting in the progress of agriculture, 

 and ascribes the increase of interest in it to the publication of 

 his Tours. George III told him he always took with him 

 the Farmer s Letters. The improvement, Young said, had 

 been largely due to individual effort, for commerce had been 

 predominant in Parliament and agriculture had begun to be 

 neglected ; a statement which, seeing that Parliament was then 

 almost entirely composed of landowners, must be accepted 

 with some reserve. 



Young died in 1820, having been totally blind for some 

 time, a misfortune which did not prevent him working hard. 

 In his well-known Tours he often had much difficulty in ob- 

 taining information, and confesses that he was forced to make 

 more than one farmer drunk before he got anything out of him. 



The exodus from the country to the towns then, as so often 

 in history, was noted by thinking people, but Young says it 

 was merely a natural consequence of the demand for profitable 

 employment and was not to be regretted ; but he wrote in a 

 time when the country population was still numerous, and 

 there was little danger of England becoming, what she is 

 to-day, a country without a solid foundation, with no reser- 

 voir of good country blood to supply the waste of the towns. 



When Young began to write, the example of Townshend 

 and his contemporaries was being followed on all sides, and 

 this good movement was stimulated by Young's writings. 

 Farming was the reigning taste of the day. There was scarce 



