‘I had a letter yesterday from your brother, in which was a paragraph that I think will give you a little pleasure. It is as follows: "I find that Arthur has printed lately a pamphlet on the ‘Exportation of Corn.’ A gentleman who came from the Drawing Room yesterday told me that the King asked him whether he had read Mr. Young’s pamphlet on the subject, and commended it." Oh, dear! how pleasing it is to have the approbation of a King, even though we never get sixpence by it. And yet how few are desirous of the approbation of the King; yet they may be sure of it if they sincerely try, and can never fail of being well rewarded, both in this world and the next. Oh! Arthur, with what capacities are you endowed—with what advantages for being greatly good! But with the talents of an angel a man may be a fool if he judges amiss on the supreme point.’ 1771.[45]—The same unremitting industry, the same anxiety, the same vain hopes, the same perpetual disappointment. No happiness, nor anything like it. This year I published the third edition of the ‘Farmer’s Letters,’ the second edition of the ‘Northern Tour,’ the ‘Farmer’s Calendar,’ my ‘Proposals for Numbering the People’—the occasion of which was the Earl of Chatham’s words: ‘When I compare the number of our people—estimated highly at seven[46] millions—with the population of France and Spain, usually computed at twenty-five millions, I see a clear, self-evident possibility for this country to contend with the united powers of the House of Bourbon merely upon the strength of its own resources.’ I conceived that to draw such political principles for the national conduct from a mere supposition of population was a doctrine tending to very mischievous errors. I therefore was convinced that an actual enumeration of the people ought to take place. Nothing, however, was done at the time, but thirty years afterwards[47] the Legislature was of the same opinion, and not till then were the numbers ascertained. This year I began my correspondence with Mr. John Baker Holroyd,[48] afterwards so well known for his literary productions as Lord Sheffield. In his first letter, dated March 1771, he mentions his wish that I should forward some cabbage seed, and hopes that I may be the means of introducing the culture of cabbages into that neighbourhood (Sussex), but adds—what must now appear singular—that the very extraordinary scarcity of hands cramps him very much. ‘All the lively, able young men are employed in smuggling. They can have a guinea a week as riders and carriers without any risk; therefore it is not to be expected that they will labour for eight shillings a week until some more effectual means are taken to prevent smuggling.’