There is little more to be said on the deplorable condition of large estates. The offensive against absenteeism, waste lands on feudal domains, carelessness of the great landlords, was launched by the physiocrats and supported by agronomes like Patullo, who wished for a better cultivation of these neglected lands. The example of England, where popular figures like Townshend, and his followers, had undertaken to obtain full value from their lands, was therefore proposed to the French aristocracy. Besides, it was the moment when political theoricians thought of giving the aristocracy a leading role in French economy. The second half of the eighteenth century is a time of a revival of the nobility, not in the sense of a selfish or blind nobiliary reaction, but a revival caused by the penetration into the nobility of liberal ideas, modelled on the English example. Lacretelle shows at the end of the ancien régime the ideal of the young aristocrats, as he must have witnessed it. A new role therefore seemed to devolve on the aristocracy. This did not include blood nobility only. According to the new economic and political theories, only those who possessed land and money were the important element and the source of the country's welfare. Agriculture, therefore, could be restored only through propriété fonciére, or personnes opulentes. The idea that land required huge investments of capital thus tended to the view that only through the rich propriétake could the new methods of agriculture be established. What the agronomes desired, was the creation of an aristocracy of money, of an agricultural capitalism, which would not only help the peasants by providing the necessary advances, but also take up model farming and act as an example.

This was, in fact, a programme wholly English in its way. De Pradt, summing up this tendency, wished for‘ I’ enseignement de methodes savantes et recherchées, qui exigent á la fois des études et des frais, des avances considérables en connaissance et en argent telles á peu prés que les méthodes employées par les agriculteurs anglais'. His programme, entirely aristocratic in inspiration, required that ‘les méthodes savantes, imitées des étrangers, appartiendront aux hommes éclair és et riches, dont l'exemple formera au milieu du peuple, et sous ses yeux, un cours d'instruction pratique’.