Arthur Young's Travels in France During the Years 1787, 1788, 1789

By Arthur Young

Arthur Young (1741-1820) was an 18th century English writer who is best known for the detailed accounts he published of his “travels” in England, Wales, Ireland and France on the eve of the revolution. After he inherited his father’s family estate in 1759 he began experimenting with agricultural improvements in order to maximise output. Although he was not always successful in achieving his goals, his writings contained very detailed observations and analysis of agricultural matters and were extremely popular. He began with
A Course of Experimental Agriculture (1770) based upon his personal experiences and then traveled widely, commenting on the state of agriculture in Britain and France. The following books were the result:
A Six Weeks’ Tour through the Southern Counties of England and Wales (1768),
A Six Months’ Tour through the North of England (1770),
Farmer’s Tour through the East of England (1771),
A Tour in Ireland 1776-1779 (1780), and
Travels in France during the Years 1787, 1788, 1789 (1792). He also published a number of reference works on agriculture and farming which went through many editions and were translated into several European languages. These included the
Farmer’s Calendar(1771),
Political Arithmetic (1774), and the 45 volume
Annals of Agriculture (1784-). Upon his return from France he was appointed to the position of secretary of the Board of Agriculture in the British government in which capacity he organized the collection and preparation of agricultural surveys of the English counties. Later in life he suffered from blindness brought on by severe cataracts and a failed operation to cure it.Young was a pioneer in the detailed observation of economic conditions in the countryside and the collection of statistical data relating to agriculture. Although modern historians dispute the reliability of his data and the conclusions he sometimes draws from them they recognise the important work he did in beginning the modern collection and analysis of this material. Young is also noteworthy for the sheer luck of being in France on the eve of and during the early part of the French Revolution. He was able to provide in his dairies close observations of the social, political and economic conditions of the French countryside as it was convulsed by violent revolution. This makes his
Travels in France (1792) particularly valuable to historians.Politically, Young was a liberal reformer. He urged the repeal of the penal laws which discriminated against Catholics, he condemned the British regulation of Irish commerce, and criticised the Irish Parliament’s industrial policy of prohibitions and bounties. He was a staunch supporter of property rights in agriculture as a means of reducing poverty. Some of his more famous sayings were “the magic of property turns sand into gold” and “give a man the secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden; give him a nine years’ lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert.”Betham-Edwards (
Miss Matilda Betham-Edwards, 1836-1919) published editions of
Young’s Travels in France in 1889 (listed as the 2nd ed.), 1890 (3rd ed.), 1892 (4th corrected ed.).
Dr. David M. Hart
BibliographyAllen, Robert C. and Cormac Ó Gráda, “On the Road Again with Arthur Young: English, Irish, and French Agriculture during the Industrial Revolution,”
Journal of Economic History 48 (1988): 93-116.Brunt Liam, “Rehabilitating Arthur Young,”
Economic History Review 56 (2003): 265-99.Gazley, John G.,
The Life of Arthur Young, 1741-1820. Philadelphia Philosophical Society, 1973.Mingay, G.E. (ed.).
Arthur Young and His Times. London: Macmillan, 1975.Stead, David R. “Arthur Young”. EH.net Encyclopedia
http://www.eh.net/encyclopedia/?article=stead.young

Book Cover

Translator/Editor

Matilda Betham-Edwards, ed.

First Pub. Date

1792

Publisher

London: George Bell and Sons

Pub. Date

1909

Copyright

The text of this edition is in the public domain. Picture of Arthur Young: frontispiece, courtesy Liberty Fund, Inc.

LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS

PORTUGAL ST. LINCOLN’S INN, W.C.

CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL & CO.

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.

BOMBAY: A. H. WHEELER & CO.

LONDON

GEORGE BELL AND SONS

1909

OFFICIER DE L’INSTRUCTION PUBLIQUE DE FRANCE

AUTHOR OF “THE ROOF OF FRANCE”

ETC. ETC.MISS BETHAM-EDWARDSEDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION, BIOGRAPHICAL

SKETCH AND NOTES, BY

ARTHUR YOUNG’S

TRAVELS IN FRANCE

DURING THE YEARS

1787, 1788, 1789

ARTHUR YOUNG’S TRAVELS

IN FRANCE

DURING THE YEARS 1787, 1788, 1789

“That wise and honest traveller.”—JOHN MORLEY.

See, for full information, the contribution of M. H. Baudrillart of the Institut to the “Revue des Deux Mondes,” 1st Oct., 1885, “Le Métayage en France et son avenir.”

See H. Martin’s “Histoire de France,” vol. iii., p. 268,
et seq., “Les Serfs transformés en roturiers,” and vol. vii., p. 190, “Etats Généraux.”

M. H. Baudrillart, “Contemporary Review,” May, 1886.

See E. Réclus, “Géographie de la France.”

See M. H. Baudrillart, “Revue des Deux Mondes,” 15th Oct. and 15th Nov., 1884.

During the year spent by the present writer in Western France (1875-6), the following announcement often met the eye at Nantes: “Ecrivain publique, 10 centimes par lettre.” Women servants who could read, much less write, were then an exception. The free night-schools opened by the municipal council rendered infinite service before the passing of the great educational act of 1886. At the School Board election, Hastings, 1889, many voters could neither read nor write!

Nevertheless, in the space of five or six years the Revolution had quadrupled the resources of civilization and enormously developed material progress throughout the country.—Mignet, vol. ii., p. 179.

“Congéable. Tenure à domaine congéable, tenure avec faculté pour le bailleur de congédier à volonté le preneur, en lui remboursant son amélioration.”—Littré.

See H. Martin, vol. viii., p. 273.

10.

See “Mémoires de la Société Industrielle de Maine et Loire,” also E. Réclus, “Géographie de la France.”

11.

I have heard of one rich farmer’s daughter of this district receiving a million of francs, £40,000, as her marriage portion.

12.

This
lunetterie resolves itself into a scientific study of noses!—a long-nosed nation requiring one kind of spectacles, a short-nosed people an other, and so on. A pair of spectacles can be made here for three half-pence.

13.

Twenty thousand copies were printed by order of the Convention, and distributed gratuitously in every commune. “Ce que,” dit le Ministre de l’Intérieur, Garat, “contribua rapidement et sensiblement à métamorphoser les cailloux des collines en vignes fécondes, et les plaines abandonnées à la tourte en gros pâturages.”—Garat, Mémoires, sur la Révolution, Paris, 1794.

14.

“Burke,” by John Morley (“English Men of Letters”), p. 162.

15.

In one of his private note-books Arthur Young writes that the manuscript of the French Travels went through a most careful process of excision before being submitted to the printer. He adds, “I am strongly of opinion that if nine-tenths of other writers would do the same thing, their performance would be so much the better, for one reads very few quartos that would not be improved by reducing to octavo.”

Another interesting fact recorded is the item of expenditure. The first journey, lasting just upon six months, cost £118 15
s. 2
d. The second journey, of eighty-eight days, cost just £61, or at the rate of fourteen shillings a day, about the sum an economical traveller would spend in France at the present time, obtaining naturally much more comfort for his money.

Readers of Arthur Young will do well to consult the reports of the Administration of Agriculture in France, 1785-7, recently published with notes by MM. Pigeonneau and De Foville, whilst the work of the latter on the subdivision of land, “Le Morcellement,” Paris, 1885, is a mine of information conveyed in a most interesting manner.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH, by Matilda Betham-Edwards.

16.

The three adjectives seem to be an interpolation of a later date.

17.

H. Pell, Esq, M.P. See “Arthur Young, agriculturist, author, and statesman,” ‘The Farmers’ Club,” W. Johnson, Salisbury Square.

18.

There seems some confusion here, surely six must be meant.

Chapter 1, Author’s Introduction