ARTHUR YOUNG'S TRAVELS IN FRANCE - Online Library of Liberty

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ARTHUR YOUNG'S TRAVELS
IN FRANCE
DURING THE YEARS I787, I788, I789
LONDON: GEORGE BEI.I. AND SONS
PORTUGAL ST. LINCOLN'S INN_ W.C.
CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON_ BELL _. CO.
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN C(_
BOMBAY : A. H. WIIEELER _ CO.
t
ix

ARTHUR YOUNG'S
• TRAVELS IN FRANCE
;- DURING THE YEARS
-: 1787, 1788, _789
EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION, BIOGRAPHICAL
SKETCH AND NOTES, BY
. MISS BETHAM-_DWARDS
OFFICIER DE LJlNSTRbCTION P_BLIQtIE DE FRANCK
AUTHOR OF _THE ROOF OF FRANCE lw
ETC. ETC.
_2
LONDON
GEORGE BELL AND SONS
i,:_)
C.L. HARDYLIBRARY
: ATLANTICCHRISTIACNOLLEGE
WILSONN,ORTHCAROLINA
That wise and honest tr_vel|er."
JoH_ MOiLEr.
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION.
T 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 cir-
cumstances 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 a_oricultural inquiries, this
time taking an easterly direction. On the ever memorable four-
teenth 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 chateaux ; heis 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 pur-
chases a second, taking care to have it securely fastened, and
although naively 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, appa-
rently unconscious, whilst narrating these unique experiences,
that his conduct was little _hort_-heroic.
The fittest introduction to the centennial edition of such a
work is surely a survey of France in the l_resent daymnot made
41257
INTRODUCTION.
in the Rotunda of the British Museum or bythe library fire-
bide, but after Arthur ¥oung's own fashion--the frui_ of inves-
tigations as laboriously and lovingly pursued as those of my
great predecessor. Ihave now followed in his footsteps for up-
wards 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 r_gime and under the Third Repubhe.
His earliest journey takes him in asouth-westerly direction,
through the Orlcannais and the Ben'i, where for the first time
hemeets with mgtayageq" amiserable system," he writes, "that
perpetuates poverty and excludes instnletion ;" and he goes on
to describe the fields a_"scenes ofpitiable management, and the
houses, ofmiselT."
Throughout the entire work wefind m_tayage, or farming on
half profits, condemned in the strongest terms, yet nothing has
done more to improve the condition of the peasant and of hus-
bandry within the last fifty years. _ M_'.tayage,indeed, which is
but another name for co-operative agriculture, forms the
stepping-stone from the status of hired labourer to that of
capitalist ; and whilst the m_tayer raises himself in the social
scale, extensive wastes are by his agency brought under cultiva-
tion. Sopopular is "la culture _mi-fruits," that, according to
the census of 1872, 11,182,000 hectares were in the hands of
m_tayers, and 9,360,000 in those ofpeasant owners. In 1880 a
diminution is seen--18 per cent. of m_tayage to set against 21
per cent. ofproprietorship. Some parts of France are far more
favourable to agricultural partnerships than others. We find
27,484 m_tairies in the department of the Landes, 24,893 in the
Dordogne, 11,632 in the Allier, 11,568in the Gironde, whilst in
the Haute Savoie and the Loz_re they may be counted by the
hundred, the last-named numbering 325 only. In most cases,
be it remembered, the m_tayer owns a bit of land. Two condi-
tions are necessary to success : in the first place, the fermier-
ggngral, or falzn bailiff, must be dispensed with ; in the second,
a good understanding is necessary between the two contracting
See,for full information,the contribution of M.H. Baudrillart of
the Iustitut to the "Revue des Dem_Mondes," 1st Oct., 1885,"Le
]_I6tayageenl_'ranceet sonavenir."
INTRODUCTION. _ii
parties--the one supplying land, stock, and implements, the'
other, manual labour, all produce being equally shared. From
fifty to a hunch'ed and fifty acres is found to be the most favom'-
able size of a m_tailie.
We will now consider the present state of things in the Berri,
a region about which Arthur Yomig 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 pro_'ess that the great novelist
herself would hardly recognize certain portions of the country
she has described so inimitably. "_¥hat, then, must be the
changes wrought in a hundred years ? The transformation is
partly realized by inspecting a pre-llevolutionary 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
Chtteauroux, 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. The
holdings varied in extent from six to thirty acres, their owners
being capitalists to the amount of from two orthree hundred to a
thousand pounds. In each case the purchaser had built him-
self a small but commodious dwelling, and suitable out-houses.
The land was well stocked and cultivated, the people were
neatly and appropriately dressed, and the signs of general con-
tentment and well-being delightful to contemplate. We next
visited a m_tairie of nearly four hundred acres, and here the
farmstead was on a large scale ; the m4tayer employed severs!
labourers who were boarded in the house, as was formerly the
custom in certain parts of England, besides two or three dairy.
maids.
INTRODUCTION.
Artificial manures and machinery had here come into use;
and if the culture could hardly bedescribed ashigh farming, the
land was clean and veryproductive. The cordial relations of
"bailleur" and " preneur," or owner and m_tayer, testified to
the satisfactoriness ofthe arrangement.
Not to be outdone by their rustic neighbours, the axtizans of
the Berrichon capital have, with few exceptions, become free.
holders also. Suburban Ch_tcauroux has, indeed, been appro-
priated bythis class: the brand-new cottages and semi-detached
villas onthe outskirts of the town representing the thrift ofthe
mechan/c--an instance ofself-help and sobriety hardly equalled
throughout France. The houses were not only built for,but by
their owners, in spare moments--another fact illustrating the
innate economy ofthe French working man.
In purely agricultural districts of the Indre, land has quad-
rupled in value within the last forty or fifty years; near the
towns, of course, the rise has been much higher
Poitou is described by Arthur Young as "an unimproved,
poor, and ugly country. It seems to want communication, de-
mand and activity of all kinds." The ancient province of
Poitou comprises La Yend@e; but if we turn to the three care-
fully drawn maps appended to the original edition of the French
Travels, we find the very name, so conspicuous a few years
later, omitted altogether. Such a blank need not astonish us.
"Who had somuch asheard of La Vendee before 1793 ?" asks
a French historian ofthe Vendean war. "Was it aprovince, a
river, a mountain ? Was it in Anjou, Brittany, or Poitou? "
Nobody knew, and, till the outbreak of the insurrection, nobody
cared to inquire. Only one roadtraversed the entire country--
that from Nantes to La l_oehelle--and on the creation of ade-
partment, it was found absolutely necessary to build a town as
chef-lieu, none of sufficient importance existing. Waste, brush-
wood, heath and morass, with here and there patches of rye
and buckwheat, occupied the place of the fertile fields and rich
pastures that now rejoice the eye of the traveller in Bas Poitou.
The transformation of recent years is startling enough. On the
occasion of my first visit to this province fifteen years ago,
many towns of the Yendean plain and Bocage were only
accessible by diligence ; since that period, railways have inter-
_ecLed the country in all direetion_---even the out of.the-way