第29章 THE INDUSTRIAL SPIRIT(9)

It is said(41)that Young and Sinclair ruined of the Board of Agriculture by making it a kind of political 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 Washington,Eldon,Catholic bishop in Ireland,financiers and agriculturists on the Continent,and the most active economists in England.He suggested a subject for a poem to Scott.(42)He wrote pamphlets about cash-payments,Catholic Emancipation,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 (4vols.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 nobleman because he is energetic.The French noble may even deserve confiscation;but he has not the slightest intention of applying the same remedy in England,where squires and noblemen 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 Constitution,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 circumstances may require totally different institutions.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,(43)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 class which,doing nothing in return,had become a mere burthen or dead weight encumbering all social development.

But in England the privileged class was identical with the governing class.