158 Professor Whewell on the 



each successive dose must universally obtain a proportionally 

 smaller return than the preceding. 



Of these hypotheses, the first is generally allowed to be ap- 

 proximately verified in England : though even here, the reluctance, 

 difficulty and loss which accompany the transfer of farming capi- 

 tal to other employments, the moral and social ties which connect 

 the landlord and tenant, and the numbers of cases in which the 

 cultivator does not live on profits only, very much limit the 

 generality, and obstruct and extend the manifestation of the naked 

 principle thus asserted. And, taking the world at large, it has 

 been shewn, in the admirable work of Mr. Jones, that this view 

 and measure of rents is entirely inapplicable, and that none of 

 the suppositions on which it proceeds have the slightest resem- 

 blance to the actual state of things. It is to be recollected there- 

 fore, that whenever the postulate of rent is introduced, the appli- 

 cation of our reasonings can only be made to cases of farmer's rents : 

 and that all countries in which serf, metayer, ryot or cottier 

 rents, or cultivator-proprietors prevail, that is 99 hundredths of 

 the cultivated globe, are to be excluded from our conclusions. 



The existence of a limiting soil, or of a soil cultivated but 

 paying no rent, is not necessarily implied in the measure of 

 rent just mentioned. The fact that there are soils approaching 

 nearly to this limit may however be conceded, and will not, in 

 most cases, much affect the conclusion. On this .supposition, 

 rent is the excess of the produce of the soil over that of an 

 equal portion of the limiting soil. 



The third supposition, that each successive dose of capital 

 must procure a proportionally smaller return, appears to be, as 



* Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, and the Sources of Taxation. Murray, 1831. 



