The Board of Agriculture, meeting in February, arranged the President’s plan for the attendance of their officers. By these laws all the officers of the Board were bound to attend, with no other exception than the months of August, September and October, with one month at Christmas and three weeks at Easter. These laws, ready cut and dried when the Board met, were adopted with no other alterations than such as the President himself had made in them, previously to their being presented at the meeting. Lord Hawke had examined the rules and orders of many societies, and found that in all letters communications were addressed to the Secretaries, and answers given by them. Sir John Sinclair struck this out, and directed all such communications to be to the President (himself), and for him also to sign all letters. This at once converted the Secretary into nothing more than a first clerk. I saw not at first the tendency of the alterations; but I soon felt their effect. All letters were dictated by the Secretary and written in a book; this book was altered and corrected at the will of the President, and such alterations made as in respect of agriculture were absurd enough; the whole done in such a manner as not to be very pleasing.
In addition to this, Sir John Sinclair gave the Board the use of his house, which ensured another circumstance hostile to my feelings. There was only one room for transacting the business, by the Secretary, under-Secretary, two clerks, to which Sir J. after added the constant attendance of an attorney, for assisting in the business of a general Enclosing Act, about which the President busied himself some years in vain. As I was determined to pass all the vacations at my farm in Suffolk, six journeys of myself and servants became necessary, and caused a considerable expense. I also was compelled to hire lodgings at the expense of two or two guineas and a half per week, and when I experienced the full career[[158]] of all these circumstances, I deliberated repeatedly and carefully with myself, whether it would not be cheaper to me to throw up the employment. Long after, upon review of the whole, I was amazed that I had not done it, more especially as my plan for settling on the moors in Yorkshire was offered to my choice. I was infinitely disgusted with the inconsiderate manner in which Sir John Sinclair appointed the persons who drew up the original reports, men being employed who scarcely knew the right end of a plough; and the President one day desired I would accompany him with one of these men, a half-pay officer out of employment, to call on Lord Moira to request his assistance in the Leicestershire Report, when this person told his Lordship that he was out of employment and should like a summer’s excursion. To do him justice, he did not know anything of the matter. Still, however, he was appointed, and amused himself with his excursion to Leicester. But the most curious circumstance of effrontery was, that the greater number of the reporters were appointed, and actually travelled upon the business before the first meeting of the Board took place, under the most preposterous of all ideas—that of surveying the whole Kingdom and printing the Reports in a single year; by which manœuvre Sir John thought he should establish a great reputation for himself. Consequently by his sole authority, who could not possibly know whether the members of the Board would approve or not such a plan. I was a capital idiot not to absent myself sufficiently to bring the matter to a question, and leave them to turn me out if they pleased. Mr. Pitt would probably have interfered and effected the object I wanted, and, if not, would have provided for me in a better way. However, I made use of the opportunities that offered to frequent the company of those that were agreeable to me; for a part of the time was pretty regularly passed at the conversaziones of Mrs. Matthew Montagu and the Countess of Bristol, where I met an assemblage of persons remarkable for every characteristic of the bas-bleu mixed with great numbers of the highest rank. [I was] also at many similar parties upon a smaller scale at Mr. Charles Coles’, the intimate friend of Soame Jenyns, and to whom he left the property of his works. The petits soupers at Mrs. Matthew Montagu’s, and to which she asked a selection of eight or nine persons, were very pleasant, the conversations interesting, and this select number more agreeable than I ever found full rooms. On my first coming to town in the spring of 1794, I enquired of several members of the Board whether there was not a farmers’ club in London, and was surprised that there never had been any institution of the kind. I determined to endeavour at establishing one, and spoke to the Duke of Bedford and the Earls of Egremont and Winchilsea, who much approved the idea, and applying also to a few more, I directed cards to be sent them from the Thatched House Tavern,[[159]] in order to establish a club. This meeting was fully attended, and a book being called for, the club was instituted, and several rules entered, and the meetings appointed once a fortnight during the sittings of Parliament. This club became very fashionable, and applications to be elected were very numerous, from the members of both Houses of Parliament; and it subsists to this day, but has for some time been very ill attended. This was occasioned by too free an election of all who offered. While the club was limited to fifty members it was well attended, but afterwards such numbers were received, and with so much facility, as greatly to injure the establishment. I have one remark to make upon clubs; the life and soul of them is limitation to a selected few, and to blackball the great mass of applicants, selecting merely such as will form a very valuable addition to the society, which probably may not amount to more than one in twenty. The annual subscription was two guineas: one to the house, one to form a fund at the disposition of the club. The latter gradually accumulated till it amounted to 700l. or 800l. Both Sir John Sinclair and I were strenuous that this might be applied to some useful purpose, and with difficulty we got an appropriation of fifty guineas as a reward for the best plough that could be produced; but the money assigned to advertisements being much too small, the offer was unknown, and no plough produced.
A member once proposed that the 800l. might be given to charitable institutions; but this was negatived in an instant, and the sum is still left (1812) unemployed in the funds.
While the club flourished the members who most generally attended were the Dukes of Bedford, Buccleugh, Montrose, the Earls of Egremont, Winchester and Darnley, the Lords of Wentworth, Somerville, de Dunstanville, Sheffield, &c. &c.
I often dined at Charles Coles’, where I met repeatedly Jacob Bryant,[[160]] Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. York, Mrs. Garrick, Hannah More, Mrs. Orde and Soame Jenyns. The conversation at these parties on the publications of the day, anecdotes of the time, with the conduct of many of the great men of the age, was usually very interesting. Alas! alas! how few of these persons are now left. I was very eager in listening to every word that fell from Hannah More, though not nearly so much so as I should have been many years after.
I had an incessant round of dinners and many evening parties, and generally with people of the highest rank and consequence, but I was not pleased, being discontented with my employment, and disgusted with the frivolous business of the Board, which seemed to me engaged in nothing that could possibly produce the least credit with the public. After five months’ residence at London, I went to the Duke of Bedford’s at Woburn on my way to Bradfield, spending some days very agreeably in company that could not fail of being interesting.
This year my second daughter Elizabeth, who, as I have mentioned before, was married to the Rev. John Hoole, died of consumption. She was of a most amiable, gentle temper, and in a resigned frame of mind, which gave me much satisfaction. The last visit I paid her at Abinger, in Surrey, she was very weak, yet not suspected to be so near her end. But at the last parting with me, she did it in so feeling and affectionate a manner as seemed to imply that she thought she should see me no more. It made me, for a time, extremely melancholy, which was shaken off with great difficulty. I took a tour into Hampshire, where I passed several days with Mr. Poulett at Sombourne, taking an account of the agriculture of that district, the result of which examination was printed as an appendix to the original Hampshire Report.
On the meeting of the Board in 1793, Sir John Sinclair had particularly requested me to draw up a Report for the County of Suffolk, to effect which I took several journeys into different parts of the county at some expense, and formed the Report which was printed in 1794. I never executed any work more commended in Suffolk than this. I had no remuneration.
Letters received this year:—
From Jeremy Bentham, Esq., enquiries into the landed property of Great Britain and into the rental and value of houses:—