I have finished reading the first volume of ‘Gibbon’s Miscellaneous Works,’ published by Lord Sheffield. Of mere worldly production, it is the most interesting that I have read for many years, more especially Gibbon’s own memoirs of himself. I have been acquainted with Lord Sheffield above forty years, and more than once met Gibbon at his house; and, if I remember rightly, the first time I was at Sheffield Place, which, I think, was in 1770, being invited by him on my advertising the intentions of the Eastern tour. Mr. Foster and Lady Elizabeth his wife, daughter of the Earl of Bristol, were there. I thought her a most fascinating woman—an opinion many times afterwards confirmed by often meeting her at Ickworth. I was not therefore surprised to find such advantageous mention made of her by Gibbon, but, alas! the whole volume has not one word of Christianity in it, though many which mark the infidelity of the whole gang. Lord Sheffield never had a grain of religion, and his intimate connections with Gibbon would alone account for it. Of course he took no pains to instil it into his family, and if Mrs. Clinton and Lady Stanley have any, they are not indebted for it to their father or to his friend. A great number of persons of high rank, extraordinary talents, and great celebrity thus passing in review, and all of them (Burke alone excepted) without the least suspicion of religion attaching to their characters, yield a melancholy impression on the mind of a Christian. Nineteen in twenty of the persons mentioned are gone to their eternal state, and of what account is it at present whether they were celebrated authors, splendid orators, great ministers, or successful generals or admirals? Whatever might be their worldly greatness how little are they to be compared at present to the case of a poor Christian whose employment was sweeping the streets! Without doubt the propriety of such observations depends entirely on Christianity being true; but what a dreadful situation is that man in whose safety is attached solely to the falsehood of that religion. The reflection makes my blood almost run cold, and old and blind as I am, and scarcely exchanging in six weeks a single word with more than one or two persons out of my family, I feel a comfort and consolation, and I will add a measure of happiness, not one atom of which would be found in my bosom if I were not most perfectly convinced of the absolute truth and importance of that blessed religion which forms the sole enjoyment of my life.
June.—Lord Winchilsea called here and chatted with me upon cottagers’ land for cows, which he is well persuaded, and most justly, is the only remedy for the evil of poor rates.
1817.—The death of the Princess Charlotte this year created the greatest sensation ever known.
1818.—On coming to London in February, five-and-twenty claims for the premium on the [summary of] the state of the poor, the causes of their distress, and the means of remedying it, were received, and it afforded me continued employment for many weeks in reading and giving a character of them. Much the greater part of the authors who drew up these memoirs were of the same opinion as to the cause of the national distress, attributing it to the peace having thrown a vast number of men out of employment who were in the Army or Navy, or working in the manufactures immediately supported by military demands; and this evil concurring with a general stagnation from the failure of a multitude of country banks, had materially affected the industry of the whole kingdom. The remedies proposed were various, and many of them visionary; the most rational advised the issuing of Exchequer Bills in payment of various sorts of public works, such as canals, roads, harbours, fisheries, and many other employments. Such suggestions had been proposed to Government, but unfortunately the ministers in England have very rarely indeed listened to any such propositions. My friend Mr. Attwood, of Birmingham, in a work publicly addressed to me, wrote upon the subject with great ability, and most justly remarked upon dismissing at once both the Army and the Navy, and turning such numbers loose upon the public when it was perfectly well known that they could not find employment was highly mischievous. This ought to have been done slowly and gradually, as the expense would have been an evil far less deplorable than that which was insured by a contrary conduct. It was the beginning of 1818 before the kingdom was decidedly found to be in a reviving state, and in the mean time the infinite number of offences against the peace and property of the people arose to an alarming height in every part of the kingdom. The first week in January I received half a year’s rents, and it was a great comfort to me to find that the tenants continued their regular payments without running the least in arrears, and this at a time when complaints on the non-payment of rents were very general over the greater part of the kingdom. I attributed this effect, which was very general around Bury and through all Suffolk, to the stability and flourishing state of our country banks, whose paper passed readily current, and formed a perfect contrast to the deficiencies and distress so generally felt in various other countries; nor can anything be more lamentable than for gentlemen of small estates finding their tenants running in arrears of rent.
This was much experienced in the counties of Cambridge, Huntingdon, and part of Bedford. Sir George Leeds informed me that he had farms in the former counties abandoned and lying absolutely waste.
ARTHUR YOUNG’S TOMB AT BRADFIELD.
Here ends the diary. Arthur Young died in Sackville Street on April 20, 1820, and was buried at Bradfield. The following letter from Mary Young to her brother in Russia gives some details about his last years. The letter (undated) apparently belongs to 1818: ‘My father talks of going to Bradfield in June with Miss Francis and Mr. St. Croix. He is fearful lest Miss Francis (who is a granddaughter of Dr. Burney, and a daughter of Mrs. Broom by her first husband) will join the Wilberforces at Brighton, and leave him. When at Bradfield she sleeps over the servants’ hall, with a packthread tied round her wrist, and placed through the keyhole, which he pulls at four or five times, till he awakens her, when she gets up and accompanies him in a two hours’ walk on the turnpike road to some cottage or other, and they take milk at some farmhouse; and she distributes tracts (religious ones), and questions the people about their principles, and reads to them and catechises them. They return at half-past six, as that is the hour Mr. St. Croix gets up (his secretary), who finds it quite enough to read and write two hours and a half before breakfast. After breakfast they all three adjourn to the library till one, when Mr. St. Croix takes his walk for an hour; she and my father read, or write, or walk till three. Before she went to Bradfield, Mr. St. Croix had but one hour. She has a table and great chair filled with books in all languages, as she reads in every language every day to keep them up—Greek, Latin, Italian, Hebrew, Arabic, German, Spanish, French, Dutch, &c. &c. &c.
‘My father puts children to school at Cuckfield, Stanningfield, and Bradfield. Every morning, summer or winter, she inspects and teaches at these schools. Every Sunday they all meet in the hall and read, and are catechised; and every Sunday night a hundred meet, when St. Croix reads a sermon and a chapter, and my father explains for an hour, after which a prayer dismisses them! Last summer they went to church at Acton or Ampton every Sunday, each church ten miles out and ten home, besides teaching the schools and the meeting at night in the hall.
‘He has taken out a licence for the hall, as there is an assembly of people which would have been otherwise liable to an information.