His friend,the fifth duke of Bedford (died 1802),was one of the greatest improvers for the South,and was succeeded by another friend,the famous Coke of Holkham,afterwards earl of Leicester,who is said to have spent half a million upon the improvement of his property.Young appeals to the class in which such men were leaders,and urges them,not against their wishes,we may suppose,and,no doubt,with much good sense,to take to their task in the true spirit of business.Nothing,he declares,is more out of place than the boast of some great landowners that they never raise their rents.(23)High rents produce industry.The man who doubles his rents benefits the country more than he benefits himself.Even in Ireland,(24)a rise of rents is one great cause of improvement,though the rent should not be excessive,and the system of middlemen is altogether detestable.One odd suggestion is characteristic.(25)He hears that wages are higher in London than elsewhere.Now,he says,in a trading country low wages are essential.He wonders,therefore,that the legislature does not limit the growth of London.
This,we may guess,is one of the petulant utterances of early years which he would have disavowed or qualified upon maturer refection.But Young is essentially an apostle of the 'glorious spirit of improvement,'(26)which has converted Norfolk sheep-walks into arable fields,and was spreading throughout the country and even into Ireland.His hero is the energetic landowner,who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before;who introduces new breeds of cattle and new courses of husbandry.He is so far in sympathy with the Wealth of Nations,although he says of that book that,while he knows of 'no abler work,'he knows of none 'fuller of poisonous errors.'(27)Young,that is,sympathised with the doctrine of the physiocrats that agriculture was the one source of real wealth,and took Smith to be too much on the side of commerce.Young,however,was as enthusiastic a free-trader as Smith.
He naturally denounces the selfishness of the manufacturers who,in 1788,objected to the free export of English wool,(28)but he also assails monopoly in general.The whole system,he says (on occasion of Pitt's French treaty),is rotten to the core.The 'vital spring and animating soul of commerce is LIBERTY.'(29)Though he talks of the balance of trade,he argues in the spirit of Smith or Cobden that we are benefited by the wealth of our customers.
If we have to import more silk,we shall export more cloth.Young,indeed,was everything but a believer in any dogmatic or consistent system of Political Economy,or,as he still calls it,Political Arithmetic.His opinions were not of the kind which can be bound to any rigid formulae.After investigating the restrictions of rent and wages in different districts,he quietly accepts the conclusion that the difference is due to accident.(30)He has as yet no fear of Malthus before his eyes.He is roused to indignation by the pessimist theory then common,that population was decaying.(31)Everywhere he sees signs of progress;buildings,plantations,woods,and canals.Employment,he says,creates population,stimulates industry,and attracts labour from backward districts.The increase of numbers is an unqualified benefit.He has no dread of excess.In Ireland,he observes,no one is fool enough to deny that population is increasing,though people deny it in England,'even in the most productive period of her industry and wealth.'(32)One cause of this blessing is the absence or the poor-law.The English poor-law is detestable to him for a reason which contrasts significantly with the later opinion.The laws were made 'in the very spirit of depopulation';they are 'monuments of barbarity and mischief';for they give to every parish an interest in keeping down the population.This tendency was in the eyes of the later economist a redeeming feature in the old system;though it had been then so modified as to stimulate what they took to be the curse,as young held it to be the blessing,of a rapid increase of population.
With such views Young was a keen advocate of the process of enclosure which was going on with increasing rapidity.He found a colleague,who may be briefly noticed as a remarkable representative of the same movement.Sir John Sinclair (1754-1835)(33)was heir to an estate of sixty thousand acres in Caithness which produced only ￡2300a year,subject to many encumbrances.
The region was still in a primitive state.There were no roads:agriculture was of the crudest kind;part of the rent was still paid in feudal services;the natives were too ignorant or lazy to fish,and there were no harbours.
Trees were scarce enough to justify Johnson,and a list of all the trees in the country included currant-bushes.(34)Sinclair was a pupil of the poet Logan:studied under Blair at Edinburgh and Millar at Glasgow;became known to Adam Smith,and,after a short time at Oxford,was called to the English bar.Sinclair was a man of enormous energy,though not of vivacious intellect.He belonged to the prosaic breed,which created the 'dismal science,'and seems to have been regarded as a stupendous bore.Bores,however,represent a social force not to be despised,and Sinclair was no exception.