THE COUNTRY SQUIRE 2ii 



England was in a most rich and flourishing situation, 'her 

 agriculture is upon the whole good and spirited and every day 

 improving, her industrious poor are well fed, clothed, and 

 lodged at reasonable rates, the prices of all necessaries being 

 moderate, our population increasing, the price of labour 

 generally high.' ^ The great degree of luxury to which the 

 country had arrived within a few years ' is not only astonish- 

 ing but almost dreadful to think of. Time was when those 

 articles of indulgence which now every mechanic aims at the 

 possession of were enjoyed only by the baron or lord.'^ Great 

 towns became the winter residence of those who could not afford 

 London, and the country was said to be everywhere deserted, 

 an evil largely attributed to the improvement of posting and 

 coaches. The true country gentleman was seldom to be found, 

 the luxuries of the age had softened down the hardy rough- 

 ness of former times and the ' country, like the capital, is one 

 scene of dissipation.' The private gentleman of ;i^3oo or 

 ;^400 a year must have his horses, dogs, carriages, pictures, 

 and parties, and thus goes to ruin. The articles of living, says 

 the same writer, were loo per cent, dearer than some time 

 back. This is a very different picture from that in which 

 Young represents every one rushing into farming, but no doubt 

 depicts one phase of national life. 



An excellent observer^ noticed in 1792 that the preceding 

 forty or fifty years had witnessed the total destruction in 

 England of the once common type of the small country squire. 

 He was : — 



'An independent gentleman of ^300 per annum who com- 

 monly appeared in a plain drab or plush coat, large silver 

 buttons, a jockey cap, and rarely without boots. His travels 



^ Northern Tour, iv. 420. The increase of population in the first half 

 of the eighteenth century was slow ; after the Peace of Paris in 1 763, 

 when the commerce and manufactures of the country were extended in 

 an unprecedented degree, it was rapid. 



' The Way to be Rich and Respectable, London, 1780. 



' Grose, Olio, pp. 41-4 ; Lecky, History of England in Eighteenth 

 Century, vi. 169 et seq. 



P % 



