A Tour in Ireland

A Tour in Ireland, by Arthur
Young, Edited by

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Edited by Henry Morley
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Title: A Tour in Ireland 1776-1779
Author: Arthur Young
Editor: Henry Morley
Release Date: August 25, 2007 [eBook #22387]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A TOUR IN
IRELAND***
This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler.

A TOUR IN IRELAND. 1776-1779.

BY ARTHUR YOUNG.
CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED: LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK
& MELBOURNE. 1897.

INTRODUCTION.
Arthur Young was born in 1741, the son of a clergyman, at Bradfield,
in Suffolk. He was apprenticed to a merchant at Lynn, but his activity
of mind caused him to be busy over many questions of the day. He
wrote when he was seventeen a pamphlet on American politics, for
which a publisher paid him with ten pounds' worth of books. He started
a periodical, which ran to six numbers. He wrote novels. When he was
twenty-eight years old his father died, and, being free to take his own
course in life, he would have entered the army if his mother had not
opposed. He settled down, therefore, to farming, and applied to farming
all his zealous energy for reform, and all the labours of his busy pen. In
1768, a year before his father's death, he had published "A Six Weeks'
Tour through the Southern Counties of England and Wales," which
found many readers.
Between 1768 and 1771 Arthur Young produced also "The Farmer's
Letters to the People of England, containing the Sentiments of a
Practical Husbandman on the present State of Husbandry." In 1770 he
published, in two thick quartos, "A Course of Experimental Agriculture,
containing an exact Register of the Business transacted during Five
Years on near 300 Acres of various Soils;" also in the same year
appeared "Rural Economy; or, Essays on the Practical Part of
Husbandry;" also in the same year "The Farmer's Guide in Hiring and
Stocking Farms," in two volumes, with plans. Also in the same year
appeared his "Farmer's Kalendar," of which the 215th edition was
published in 1862. There had been a second edition of the "Six Weeks'
Tour in the South of England," with enlargements, in 1769, and Arthur
Young was encouraged to go on with increasing vigour to the
publication of "The Farmer's Tour through the East of England: being a
Register of a Journey through various Counties, to inquire into the State

of Agriculture, Manufactures, and Population." This extended to four
volumes, and appeared in the years 1770 and 1771. In 1771 also
appeared, in four volumes, with plates, "A Six Months' Tour through
the North of England, containing an Account of the Present State of
Agriculture, Manufactures, and Population in several Counties of this
Kingdom."
Thus Arthur Young took all his countrymen into counsel while he was
learning his art, as a farmer who brought to his calling a vigorous spirit
of inquiry with an activity in the diffusion of his thoughts that is a part
of God's gift to the men who have thoughts to diffuse; the instinct for
utterance being almost invariably joined to the power of suggesting
what may help the world.
Whether he was essentially author turned farmer, or farmer turned
author, Arthur Young has the first place in English literature as a
farmer-author. Other practical men have written practical books of
permanent value, which have places of honour in the literature of the
farm; but Arthur Young's writings have won friends for themselves
among readers of every class, and belong more broadly to the literature
of the country.
Between 1766 and 1775 he says that he made 3,000 pounds by his
agricultural writings. The pen brought him more profit than the plough.
He took a hundred acres in Hertfordshire, and said of them, "I know not
what epithet to give this soil; sterility falls short of the idea; a hungry
vitriolic gravel--I occupied for nine years the jaws of a wolf. A nabob's
fortune would sink in the attempt to raise good arable crops in such a
country. My experience and knowledge had increased from travelling
and practice, but all was lost when exerted on such a spot." He tried at
one time to balance his farm losses by reporting for the Morning Post,
taking a seventeen-mile walk home to his farm every Saturday night.
In 1780 Arthur Young published this "Tour in Ireland, with General
Observations on the Present State of that Kingdom in 1776-78." The
general