The English Utilitarians Volume I Part 3

and 'miscellaneous' informations) to every parish minister in Scotland.

He surmounted various jealousies naturally excited, and the ultimate result was the _Statistical Account of Scotland_, which appeared in twenty-one volumes between 1791 and 1799.[65] It gives an account of every parish in Scotland, and was of great value as supplying a basis for all social investigations. Sinclair bore the expense, and gave the profits to the 'Sons of the Clergy.' In 1793 Sinclair, who had been in parliament since 1780, made himself useful to Pitt in connection with the issue of exchequer bills to meet the commercial crisis. He begged in return for the foundation of a Board of Agriculture. He became the president and Arthur Young the secretary;[66] and the board represented their common aspirations. It was a rather anomalous body, something between a government office and such an inst.i.tution as the Royal Society; and was supported by an annual grant of 3000. The first aim of the board was to produce a statistical account of England on the plan of the Scottish account. The English clergy, however, were suspicious; they thought, it seems, that the collection of statistics meant an attack upon t.i.thes; and Young's frequent denunciation of t.i.thes as discouraging agricultural improvement suggests some excuse for the belief. The plan had to be dropped; a less thoroughgoing description of the counties was subst.i.tuted; and a good many 'Views' of the agriculture of different counties were published in 1794 and succeeding years. The board did its best to be active with narrow means. It circulated information, distributed medals, and brought agricultural improvers together. It encouraged the publication of Erasmus Darwin's _Phytologia_ (1799), and procured a series of lectures from Humphry Davy, afterwards published as _Elements of Agricultural Chemistry_ (1813). Sinclair also claims to have encouraged Macadam (1756-1836), the road-maker, and Meikle, the inventor of the thras.h.i.+ng-machine. One great aim of the board was to promote enclosures. Young observes in the introductory paper to the _Annals_ that within forty years nine hundred bills had been pa.s.sed affecting about a million acres. This included wastes, but the greater part was already cultivated under the 'constraint and imperfection of the open field system,' a relic of the 'barbarity of our ancestors.'

Enclosures involved procuring acts of parliament--a consequent expenditure, as Young estimates, of some 2000 in each case;[67] and as they were generally obtained by the great landowners, there was a frequent neglect of the rights of the poor and of the smaller holders.

The remedy proposed was a general enclosure act; and such an act pa.s.sed the House of Commons in 1798, but was thrown out by the Lords. An act was not obtained till after the Reform Bill. Sinclair, however, obtained some modification of the procedure; which, it is said, facilitated the pa.s.sage of private bills. They became more numerous in later years, though other causes obviously co-operated. Meanwhile, it is characteristic that Sinclair and Young regarded wastes as a backwoodsman regarded a forest. The incidental injury to poor commoners was not unnoticed, and became one of the topics of Cobbett's eloquence. But to the ardent agriculturist the existence of a bit of waste land was a simple proof of barbarism. Sinclair's favourite toast, we are told, was 'May commons become uncommon'--his one attempt at a joke. He prayed that Epping Forest and Finchley Common might pa.s.s under the yoke as well as our foreign enemies. Young is driven out of all patience by the sight of 'fern, ling, and other trumpery' usurping the place of possible arable fields.[68] He groans in spirit upon Salisbury Plain, which might be made to produce all the corn we import.[69] Enfield Chase, he declares, is a 'real nuisance to the public.'[70] We may be glad that the zeal for enclosure was not successful in all its aims; but this view of philanthropic and energetic improvers is characteristic.

It is said[71] that Young and Sinclair ruined the Board of Agriculture by making it a kind of political debating club. It died in 1822.

Sinclair obtained an appointment in Scotland, and continued to labour unremittingly. He carried on a correspondence with all manner of people, including Was.h.i.+ngton, Eldon, Catholic bishops in Ireland, financiers and agriculturists on the Continent, and the most active economists in England. He suggested a subject for a poem to Scott.[72] He wrote pamphlets about cash-payments, Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation, and the Reform Bill, always disagreeing with all parties. He projected four codes which were to summarise all human knowledge upon health, agriculture, political economy, and religion. _The Code of Health_ (4 vols., 1807) went through six editions; _The Code of Agriculture_ appeared in 1829; but the world has not been enriched by the others. He died at Edinburgh on the 21st September 1835.

I have dwelt so far upon Young because he is the best representative of that 'glorious spirit of improvement' which was transforming the whole social structure. Young's view of the French revolution indicates one marked characteristic of that spirit. He denounces the French seigneur because he is lethargic. He admires the English n.o.bleman because he is energetic. The French n.o.ble may even deserve confiscation; but he has not the slightest intention of applying the same remedy in England, where squires and n.o.blemen are the very source of all improvement. He holds that government is everything, and admires the great works of the French despotism: and yet he is a thorough admirer of the liberties enjoyed under the British Const.i.tution, the essential nature of which makes similar works impossible. I need not ask whether Young's logic could be justified; though it would obviously require for justification a thoroughly 'empirical' view, or, in other words, the admission that different circ.u.mstances may require totally different inst.i.tutions. The view, however, which was congenial to the prevalent spirit of improvement must be noted.

It might be stated as a paradox that, whereas in France the most palpable evils arose from the excessive power of the central government, and in England the most palpable evils arose from the feebleness of the central government, the French reformers demanded more government and the English reformers demanded less government. 'Everything for the people, nothing by the people,' was, as Mr. Morley remarks,[73] the maxim of the French economists. The solution seems to be easy. In France, reformers such as Turgot and the economists were in favour of an enlightened despotism, because the state meant a centralised power which might be turned against the aristocracy. Once 'enlightened' it would suppress the exclusive privileges of a cla.s.s which, doing nothing in return, had become a mere burthen or dead weight enc.u.mbering all social development. But in England the privileged cla.s.s was identical with the governing cla.s.s. The political liberty of which Englishmen were rightfully proud, the 'rule of law' which made every official responsible to the ordinary course of justice, and the actual discharge of their duties by the governing order, saved it from being the objects of a jealous cla.s.s hatred. While in France government was staggering under an ever-acc.u.mulating resentment against the aristocracy, the contemporary position in England was, on the whole, one of political apathy. The country, though it had lost its colonies, was making unprecedented progress in wealth; commerce, manufactures, and agriculture were being developed by the energy of individuals; and Pitt was beginning to apply Adam Smith's principles to finance. The cry for parliamentary reform died out: neither Whigs nor Tories really cared for it; and the 'glorious spirit of improvement' showed itself in an energy which had little political application. The n.o.bility was not an incubus suppressing individual energy and confronted by the state, but was itself the state; and its individual members were often leaders in industrial improvement. Discontent, therefore, took in the main a different form. Some government was, of course, necessary, and the existing system was too much in harmony, even in its defects, with the social order to provoke any distinct revolutionary sentiment. Englishmen were not only satisfied with their main inst.i.tutions, but regarded them with exaggerated complacency. But, though there was no organic disorder, there were plenty of abuses to be remedied. The ruling cla.s.s, it seemed, did its duties in the main, but took unconscionable perquisites in return. If it 'farmed' them, it was right that it should have a beneficial interest in the concern; but that interest might be excessive. In many directions abuses were growing up which required remedy, though not a subversion of the system under which they had been generated. It was not desired--unless by a very few theorists--to make any sweeping redistribution of power; but it was eminently desirable to find some means of better regulating many evil practices. The attack upon such practices might ultimately suggest--as, in fact, it did suggest--the necessity of far more thoroughgoing reforms. For the present, however, the characteristic mark of English reformers was this limitation of their schemes, and a mark which is especially evident in Bentham and his followers. I will speak, therefore, of the many questions which were arising, partly for these reasons and partly because the Utilitarian theory was in great part moulded by the particular problems which they had to argue.

NOTES:

[35] Young's _Travels in France_ was republished in 1892, with a preface and short life by Miss Betham Edwards. She has since (1898) published his autobiography. See also the autobiographical sketch in the _Annals of Agriculture_, xv. 152-97. Young's _Farmer's Letters_ first appeared in 1767; his _Tours_ in the Southern, Northern, and Eastern Counties in 1768, 1770, and 1771; his _Tour in Ireland_ in 1780; and his _Travels in France_ in 1792. A useful bibliography, containing a list of his many publications, is appended to the edition of the _Tour in Ireland_ edited by Mr. A. W. Hutton in 1892.

[36] _Annals_, xv. 166.

[37] _Travels in France_ (1892), p. 184 _n._

[38] _Travels in France_, p. 54.

[39] _Ibid._ p. 109.

[40] _Ibid._ p. 61.

[41] _Ibid._ p. 70.

[42] _Ibid._ p. 279.

[43] _Travels in France_, p. 125.

[44] _Ibid._ p. 131.

[45] _Ibid._ pp. 198, 298.

[46] _Ibid._ pp. 55, 193, 199, 237.

[47] _Ibid._ p. 43.

[48] _Travels in France_, pp. 291-92.

[49] _Ibid._ p. 132.

[50] _Ibid._ p. 66.

[51] _Ibid._ p. 131.

[52] e.g. _Southern Tour_, p. 103; _Northern Tour_, p. 180 (York Cathedral).

[53] _Northern Tour_, iv. 344, 377.

[54] _Irish Tour_, ii. 114.

[55] _Southern Tour_, p. 326.

[56] _Southern Tour_, p. 22.

[57] _Annals_, i. 380.

[58] _Ibid._ vol, x.

[59] _Ibid._ iv. 17.

[60] _Southern Tour_, p. 262; _Northern Tour_, ii. 412.

[61] _Northern Tour_, iv. 410, etc.

[62] _Irish Tour_, ii. 118-19.

[63] _Memoirs of Sir John Sinclair_, by his son. 2 vols., 1837.

[64] _Memoirs_, i. 338.

[65] _A New Statistical Account_, replacing this, appeared in twenty-four volumes from 1834 to 1844.

[66] He was president for the first five years, and again, from 1806 till 1813. For an account of this, see Sir Ernest Clarke's _History of the Board of Agriculture_, 1898.

[67] _Northern Tour_, i. 222-32.

[68] _Northern Tour_, ii. 186.

[69] _Southern Tour_, p. 20.

[70] _Northern Tour_, iii. 365.

[71] Arthur Young had a low opinion of Sinclair, whom he took to be a pus.h.i.+ng and consequential busybody, more anxious to make a noise than to be useful. See Young's _Autobiography_ (1898), pp. 243, 315, 437. Sir Ernest Clarke points out the injury done by Sinclair's hasty and blundering extravagance; but also shows that the board did great service in stimulating agricultural improvement.

[72] Scott's _Letters_, i. 202.

[73] Essay on 'Turgot.' See, in Daire's Collection of the _economistes_, the arguments of Quesnay (p. 81), Dupont de Nemours (p. 360), and Mercier de la Riviere in favour of a legal (as distinguished from an 'arbitrary') despotism.

CHAPTER III

SOCIAL PROBLEMS