

ARTHUR YOUNG 193 



a nobleman without his farm, most of the country gentlemen 

 were farmers, and attended closely to their business instead 

 of leaving it to stewards, ' who governed in matters of wheat 

 and barley as absolutely as in covenants of leases,' and the 

 squire delighted in setting the country a staring at the novel- 

 ties he introduced. Even the stable and the kennel were 

 ousted by farming from rural talk,^ and citizens who breathed 

 the smoke of London five days a week were farmers the other 

 two, and many young fellows of small fortune who had been 

 brought up in the country took farms, and the fashion was 

 followed by doctors, lawyers, clergymen, soldiers^ sailors, and 

 merchants. The American and French War of 1775-83 and the 

 great conflict with France from 1793 to 1815 were, however, to 

 divert many of the upper classes from agriculture, for they 

 very properly thought their duty was then to fight for their 

 country ; so that we again have numerous complaints of agents 

 and stewards managing estates who knew nothing whatever 

 about their business. It was not to be wondered at that all 

 this activity brought about considerable progress. 'There 

 have been, ' said Young about 1770, * more experiments, more 

 discoveries, and more general good sense displayed within 

 these ten years than in a hundred preceding ones, ' a state- 

 ment which perhaps did not attach sufficient importance to 

 the work of Townshend and his contemporaries, and to the 

 ' new husbandry ' of TuU, which Young did not appreciate at 

 its full value.2 



The place subsequently taken by the Board of Agriculture, 

 and in our time by the Royal Agricultural Society, was then 



^ Rural Economy (1771), pp. 173-5. Trusler, who wrote in 1780, men- 

 tions ' the general rage for farming throughout the kingdom.' — Practical 

 Husbandry, p. i. 



* In 1780 Sir Thomas Bernard, travelling through Northumberland, 

 saw ' luxuriant plantations, neat hedges, rich crops of corn, comfortable 

 farm-houses ' in a county whereof the greater part was barren moor 

 dearly rented at \s. 6d. an acre thirty years before, and he said the 

 county had increased in annual value fourfold. (Contemporary MS., un- 

 published.) 



CL'RTLF.R O 



