Arthur Young's Travels in France During the Years 1787, 1788, 1789
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The Online Library of Liberty A Project Of Liberty Fund, Inc. Arthur Young, Arthur Young’s Travels in France during the Years 1787, 1788, 1789 [1792] The Online Library Of Liberty This E-Book (PDF format) is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a private, non-profit, educational foundation established in 1960 to encourage study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. 2010 was the 50th anniversary year of the founding of Liberty Fund. It is part of the Online Library of Liberty web site http://oll.libertyfund.org, which was established in 2004 in order to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. To find out more about the author or title, to use the site's powerful search engine, to see other titles in other formats (HTML, facsimile PDF), or to make use of the hundreds of essays, educational aids, and study guides, please visit the OLL web site. 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Author: Arthur Young Editor: Mathilda Betham-Edwards About This Title: Young was an 18thC pioneer in the detailed observation of economic conditions in the countryside and the collection of statistical data relating to agriculture. He was extraordinarily lucky in being in France on the eve of and during the early part of the French Revolution. In his dairies he gives 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. PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 2 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/292 Online Library of Liberty: Arthur Young’s Travels in France during the Years 1787, 1788, 1789 About Liberty Fund: Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. Copyright Information: The text is in the public domain. Fair Use Statement: This material is put online to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. Unless otherwise stated in the Copyright Information section above, this material may be used freely for educational and academic purposes. It may not be used in any way for profit. PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 3 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/292 Online Library of Liberty: Arthur Young’s Travels in France during the Years 1787, 1788, 1789 Table Of Contents Editor's Introduction By Matilda Betham-edwards Biographical Sketch By Matilda Betham-edwards Bibliography By Matilda Betham-edwards Preface Travels During the Years 1787, 1788, and 1789. Journal. May 15, 1787. 1788. 1789. On the Revolution of France. Future Effects. 1792. "That wise and honest traveller." —JOHN MORLEY. PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 4 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/292 Online Library of Liberty: Arthur Young’s Travels in France during the Years 1787, 1788, 1789 [Back to Table of Contents] EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION By Matilda Betham-Edwards IT is with peculiar appropriateness that these famous travels are once more given to the world. Just a hundred years ago the Suffolk squire accomplished his last journey, under circumstances without parallel in history. He had quitted Paris towards the end of June, 1789, having come to the conclusion that, with the constitution of the National Assembly "the whole business now seemed over and the revolution complete." With true British coolness he pursued his agricultural inquiries, this time taking an easterly direction. On the ever memorable fourteenth of July we find him at Metz, leisurely as any modern tourist inspecting "what was worth viewing" in the city. A few days later, on reaching Strasburg, he learns the great news: The Bastille has fallen! The whole kingdom is now in a blaze. He sees famished mobs clamouring for bread; he hears of seigneurs fleeing from burning châteaux; he is roughly compelled to don the tricolour; his liberty, even life, are menaced; yet the imperturbable Englishman goes on. The wind carries his first cockade into the river; he purchases a second, taking care to have it securely fastened, and although naïvely confessing the discomforts of travel "in such an unquiet and fermenting moment," the thought of turning back does not occur to him. Alone, unarmed, ignorant of the various patois—sole medium of intercourse in rural districts—our inquisitive and dauntless traveller visits one out-of-the-way region after another, apparently unconscious, whilst narrating these unique experiences, that his conduct was little short of heroic. The fittest introduction to the centennial edition of such a work is surely a survey of France in the present day—not made in the Rotunda of the British Museum or by the library fireside, but after Arthur Young's own fashion—the fruit of investigations as laboriously and lovingly pursued as those of my great predecessor. I have now followed in his footsteps for upwards of fifteen years, visiting and revisiting various parts of the country described by him so graphically on the eve of the Revolution. Let us glance at the contrasted picture of France under the ancien régime and under the Third Republic. His earliest journey takes him in a south-westerly direction, through the Orleannais and the Berri, where for the first time he meets with métayage—"a miserable system," he writes, "that perpetuates poverty and excludes instruction;" and he goes on to describe the fields as "scenes of pitiable management, and the houses, of misery." Throughout the entire work we find métayage, or farming on half profits, condemned in the strongest terms, yet nothing has done more to improve the condition of the peasant and of husbandry within the last fifty years.1 Métayage, indeed, which is but PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 5 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/292 Online Library of Liberty: Arthur Young’s Travels in France during the Years 1787, 1788, 1789 another name for co-operative agriculture, forms the stepping-stone from the status of hired labourer to that of capitalist; and whilst the métayer raises himself in the social scale, extensive wastes are by his agency brought under cultivation. So popular is "la culture à mi-fruits," that, according to the census of 1872, 11,182,000 hectares were in the hands of métayers, and 9,360,000 in those of peasant owners. In 1880 a diminution is seen—18 per cent. of métayage to set against 21 per cent. of proprietorship. Some parts of France are far more favourable to agricultural partnerships than others. We find 27,484 métairies in the department of the Landes, 24,893 in the Dordogne, 11,632 in the Allier, 11,568 in the Gironde, whilst in the Haute Savoie and the Lozère they may be counted by the hundred, the last-named numbering 325 only. In most cases, be it remembered, the métayer owns a bit of land. Two conditions are necessary to success: in the first place, the fermier-général, or farm bailiff, must be dispensed with; in the second, a good understanding is necessary between the two contracting parties—the one supplying land, stock, and implements, the other, manual labour, all produce being equally shared. From fifty to a hundred and fifty acres is found to be the most favourable size of a métairie. We will now consider the present state of things in the Berri, a region about which Arthur Young has nothing to say, except that the husbandry was poor and the people miserable. As all readers of Georges Sand know well, it is a land of heaths and wastes, but the extent of uncultivated tracts is being reduced year by year. So rapid is the progress that the great novelist herself would hardly recognize certain portions of the country she has described so inimitably. What, then, must be the changes wrought in a hundred years? The transformation is partly realized by inspecting a pre- Revolutionary hovel. Here and there may be seen one of these bare, windowless cabins, now used as an out-house, and, in juxtaposition, the neat, airy, solid dwellings the peasant owners have built for themselves. Four years ago I was the guest of a country gentleman near Châteauroux, chef-lieu of the department of the Indre, formed from the ancient Berri. Formerly owner of an entire commune, my host had gradually reduced his estate by selling small parcels of land to his day-labourers. He informed me that, whilst partly actuated by philanthropic motives, he was commercially a gainer. The expense of cultivating such large occupations was very great, and he could not hope for anything like the returns of the small freeholder. We visited many of these newly-made farms, with their spick- and-span buildings, the whole having the appearance of a little settlement in the Far West.