PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 497 



have arisen from overlooking the most obvious facts or deductions 

 from experience. 



With a purpose of further elucidating this problem, attention is 

 asked first to its consideration from an " abstract," and next from 

 a practical standpoint of view. Let us endeavor to clearly understand 

 the common meaning of the word " rent." It is derived from the 

 Latin reddita, " things given back or paid," and in plain English is a 

 word for price or hire. It may be the hire of anything. It is the price 

 we pay for the right of exclusive use over something which is not our 

 own. Thus we speak of the rent of land, of buildings and apartments, 

 of a fishery, of boats, of water, of an opera box, of a piano, sewing ma- 

 chines, furniture, vehicles, and the like. In Scotland at the present 

 time farmers hire cows to dairymen, who pay an agreed-upon price 

 by the year or for a term of years for each cow, and reimburse them- 

 selves for such payment and make a profit on the transaction by the 

 sale of the products of the animal. This hire is called a rent, and is 

 clearly the same in kind as the rent of land. We do not apply the 

 word " hire " to the employment of men, because we have a separate 

 word — " wages " — for that particular case of hire. Neither do we 

 apply the word " rent " in English to the hire of money, because we 

 have another separate word — " interest " — which has come into spe- 

 cial use for the price paid for the loan or hire of money. But in the 

 French language the word rent is habitually and specially used to 

 signify the price of the hire money, and that of " rentes " to 

 investments of money paying interest; the Erench national 

 debt being always spoken of as " les rentes " ; while the men who 

 live on the lending of money, or capital in any form, are called 

 " rentiers." 



The question next naturally arises, Why is it necessary to set 

 up any special theory at all about the natural disposition of the price 

 which we pay for the hire of land, any more than about the price we 

 pay for the hire of a house, of furniture, of a boat, of an opera box, 

 or of a cow? The particular kind of use to which we put each of 

 these various things is no doubt very different from the kind of use 

 to which we put each or all the others. But all of these uses resolve 

 themselves into the desire we have to derive some pleasure or some 

 profit by the possession for a time of the right of exclusive use of 

 something which is not our own, and for which we must pay the price, 

 not of purchase, but of hire. 



The explanation of this curious economic phenomenon is to be 

 found in the assumption and positive assertion on the part of not a 

 few distinguished economists that the truly scientific and only cor- 

 rect use of the term " rent " is its application to the " income derived 

 from things of all kinds of which the supply is limited, and can not be 



TOL. LIT. — 36 



