

POLITICAL ECONOMY. 



the wages of labour, we have used terms referrible 

 only to the ordinary labourer. But the same 

 principles apply to skilled labour in all its grades 

 to the mechanic, to the merchant, to the phy- 

 sician, to the lawyer ; with this qualification only, 

 that a considerable proportion of their remunera- 

 tion goes to compensate the cost of special edu- 

 cation. 



LAND AND OTHER NATURAL PRODUCTS. 



Supply of Natural Products. 



We have already seen that some of these are 

 nearly unlimited in supply, and are diffused to all 

 that want them ; that others are obtained in 

 limited measure, or from a particular source, and 

 that when these are owned in law or in fact by 

 particular individuals, they acquire exchangeable 

 value. 



Most commodities are the produce partly of 

 nature and partly of labour. Wheat grows by 

 nature, but the ground must be tilled, and the 

 crop sown and reaped. It is of importance, then, 

 to trace how the price of the article may be 

 apportioned to labour and to nature respectively. 

 When the natural agency employed is universally 

 diffused, such as air, it bears no exchangeable 

 value ; but land and some other natural agents are 

 limited in supply. 



Of Rent 



A lot of 100 acres of land, by means .of a certain 

 amount of labour, yields 250 quarters of wheat ; 

 another lot of like measure yields with like labour 

 350 quarters. Whatever portion of the first 250 

 quarters is due to the labour and capital spent 

 in raising it, this we see that 100 more quarters 

 is attributable to the agency of nature in the 

 latter than in the former case. But suppose a 

 third lot of land of 100 acres, yielding with like 

 labour 100 quarters of wheat, and that this last 

 produce 100 quarters just suffices to remunerate 

 the labour and capital spent in raising the crop. 

 The amount of labour spent in raising a crop on 

 all the three lots being the same there is left in 

 the first case, 150 quarters, in the second, 250 

 quarters, in excess of the cost of producing the 

 crop ; but in the third case there is left no excess 

 whatever. The excess thus brought out is re- 

 garded as the share of the exchangeable value of 

 the crop attributable to nature, and is the source 

 and the limit of the exchangeable value of the 

 use of the land for the year in which the crop is 

 raised. 



The source of rent is this produce of land in 

 excess of the cost of the labour and capital re- 

 quisite to raise crops upon it. But will this sur- 

 plus go all to the landowner ? If the landowner 

 himself till the ground, he, of course, will have all 

 the produce ; but if he let the ground that is, 

 give the privilege of cropping to another who 

 will receive the surplus over the cost of labour ? 



As in other cases, this will just depend on the 

 relation of supply to demand. In a newly settled 

 country, where land is abundant in comparison 

 with population, land will scarcely fetch any rent. 

 It is the labourer, or the employer of labour, that 

 reaps all, or nearly all, the surplus produce. In 

 an old country, again, where the supply falls far 

 short of the demand, the landlord may put a rack 



valuation on his land ; often he does so, some- 

 times he chooses not to do so, willing rather that 

 his tenants should sit easy. And there are all 

 degrees in the scale between the two extremes. 



On principles regulating the application of 

 labour, no land will be cultivated for the sake of 

 raising food unless it is believed that the produce 

 will repay the labour ; and all excess of fertility 

 beyond the fertility that will barely pay the labour, 

 is a source of income to the landowner. On 

 the other hand, there is a tendency to turn to 

 account and bring to market all land which, with 

 the improvements and appliances known at the 

 time, may be supposed capable of yielding produce 

 sufficient to maintain the labour spent in cropping 

 it. 



We may next ask in -what form the surplus will 

 be paid ? The form in which landowners receive 

 remuneration for the use of land varies much in 

 different grades of civilisation. In countries where 

 serfdom prevails, tenants are bound to their pos- 

 sessions from generation to generation, and, for 

 the use of these possessions, give one-half their 

 labour to the cultivation of the landowner's farm. 

 In other countries, the metayer system prevails 

 the tenant giving to the landowner yearly one-half 

 the gross produce of his farm. In our own country, 

 not long ago, rents were payable for the most 

 part in kind as so many bolls of meal or grain 

 a system which still prevails to some extent 

 among us ; but nowadays, the prevalent arrange- 

 ment is for the tenant to pay a rent in money. 



The further removed from the consumers the 

 land is, the rent will be the less, although it be 

 equally fertile with land situated nearer the con- 

 sumers' market in the former case, the cost of 

 bringing the grain to market being greater than 

 in the latter. The rent of land situated near a 

 large town is sometimes enormous ; and so with 

 some sites for buildings. 



It is needless to follow in detail the other uses 

 of land, as affording water-power, sites for building, 

 &c. 



Demand for Natural Products. 



This demand is very wide and urgent. Most 

 commodities, indeed, fall to some extent under 

 the class of natural productions, though they vary 

 in the amount of labour bestowed in their extrac- 

 tion, in their manufacture, or in bringing them to 

 the consumer. According to the amount of labour 

 bestowed upon them, is their value to be attrib- 

 uted to labour or to the use of natural agents ; 

 and it is noticeable that, in the matter oifood, a 

 large proportion of the exchangeable value is 

 attributable to the use of natural agents. In a 

 peculiar degree, therefore, the demand for food 

 is a demand for a natural production. It is so 

 also to some extent with the other necessaries of 

 life. The demand for natural productions is, there- 

 fore, great and urgent, and increases directly with 

 the number of the population. 



To satisfy demand and supply, it is necessary 

 that the object be brought to the consumer. It 

 matters not to the consumer of wheat that America 

 be full of it, if nobody will bring it to him ; it 

 availed nothing to the townsman, before the days 

 of railways, to know that twenty miles inland 

 there were plenty of butter, eggs, and milk ; his 

 demand is that these things be brought within 



his reach. 



Ml 



