‘Many serious evils may be prevented if a person of your influence could have conveyed to Asia your sentiments upon taxation, the corn, trade, &c., for the perusal of the several servants entrusted with the charge of vast districts with numerous industrious subjects. If Necker committed such palpable mistakes after so much experience, must not young men in the company’s service be subject to fatal errors where the instruction of books is not always to be attained, or the advice of the well-informed, as in Europe?
‘I remain, with respect, sir,
‘Your most obedient humble servant,
‘Thomas Law.’
From the Right Hon. Edmund Burke, highly praising the ‘Example of France’:—
Mr. Burke thanks Mr. Young for his most able, useful and reasonable pamphlet. He has not seen anything written in this controversy which stands better bottomed upon practical principle, or is more likely to produce an effect on the popular mind. It is, indeed, incomparably well done. We are all very much obliged to Mr. Young, and think the Committee ought to circulate his book.
‘Duke Street, St. James’s: March 5, 1793.’
From Dr. Burney, on my ‘Example of France,’ &c.:—
‘Chelsea College: May 12, 1793.
‘My dear Friend,—I cannot let Mrs. Young return without sending you my best thanks for the second edition of your excellent pamphlet. Indeed, if I were singular in approbation of it, you might think me a cleverer fellow than I shall seem among the crowd of your admirers. What is a single name in a list fifty yards long? And if I were to tell you what numbers of first-rate judges have spoke well of your performance, I should want more room than Mr. Sheridan’s friends at Glasgow. I shall only just specify those who would be at the head of a complete list, if I had time to make one: Mr. Burke, Lord Orford, who, on my asking him if he had seen your pamphlet, pointed to it, “There it is; I read nothing else;” Mrs. Montagu the same; a large party of bluestockings at Lady Hesketh’s all agreed that your book and Hannah More’s “Chip”[[155]] were the best on the subject. When I made Mrs. Crewe read the first edition, she wrote me word that she had perused it with great attention, and that she found it contained stubborn facts, to each of which she should say with the grave-digger, “Answer me that and unyoke.” Last week, in a note she sent me from Hampstead, she says: "Mr. Arthur Young’s pamphlet makes a great noise, and, I think, I never knew any book take more; it is reprinted, you know, with additions." In the communication of the latter information she got the start of me; the second edition could not have been out three days but you are meditating a third. I like your additions to the second much, particularly what concerns the reform of Parliament.