Arthur Young (agriculturist)

Arthur Young (11 September 1741 – 12 April 1820) was an English writer on agriculture, economics, social statistics, and campaigner for the rights of agricultural workers. Not himself successful as a farmer, he built on connections and activities as a publicist a substantial reputation as an expert on agricultural improvement. After the French Revolution of 1789, his views on its politics carried weight as an informed observer, and he became an important opponent of British reformers.

Young is considered a major English writer on agriculture; but it is as a social and political observer that he is best known, and for his Tour in Ireland (1780) and Travels in France (1792).

Young was born in 1741 at Whitehall, London, the second son of Arthur Young, who was rector of Bradfield Combust in Suffolk and chaplain to Arthur Onslow, and his wife Anna Lucretia Coussmaker. After attending school at Lavenham from 1748, he was in 1758 placed at Messrs. Robertson, a mercantile house in King's Lynn. His sister Elizabeth Mary, who married John Thomlinson in 1758, died the following year. The plan for Young to work, after his training at Messrs. Thomlinson, in London, under his sister's in-laws, was disrupted by the death.

Young's father also died in 1759. In 1761 Young went to London and the following year started a magazine entitled The Universal Museum. It ran to five numbers, edited by Young, who recruited William Kenrick, just out of King's Bench Prison, and was then sold to a consortium of booksellers, the initial advice of Samuel Johnson who wanted no part of it. Young suffered from lung disease from 1761 to 1763, and turned down an offer of a post as a cavalry officer from Sir Charles Howard. Young's mother then gave him charge of the family estate at Bradfield Hall, a small property encumbered with debt. Between 1763 and 1766 he concentrated on farming there.

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