100 DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH IN ENGLAND 



outlay of the tenant. No system can be more self-condemned 

 than that in which the occupier prefers the poor returns of the 

 cultura annua under a tenancy at will to the better prospects 

 of an agricultural lease, with an adequate security. 



Bearing in mind that under the agricultural system on which 

 Gregory King commented, the average produce of corn in 

 England, all kinds included, was only reckoned at ten bushels 

 an acre, an under-estimate I believe, as the average rate of 

 production in the fifteenth century (vol. iv. p. 39) is only a 

 little under thirteen bushels for the same kinds of grain which 

 Davenant mentions, the question occurs, how rent can have 

 risen from 6d. an acre to 5^. 6</., as King makes it rise ; though 

 here I think that he has exaggerated the rent, as he mini- 

 mised the produce. Now it is plain that if the cost of pro- 

 duction had increased pari passu with the price of the product, 

 the margin for natural rent would not have widened. If the 

 average price of wheat for example during the epoch 1401-1540 

 was 6s. a quarter and that of the same grain between 1603 and 

 1702 was 41 s., if the cultivable area was not more productive 

 in quantity than it was in the fifteenth century, and Gregory 

 King makes it less productive, and if the cost of production 

 and the farmer's profit did not diminish during the period, 

 one cannot easily see how rent could have risen, except at the 

 cost of profit or wages, or both. 



Now I will not anticipate, at this part of my enquiry into 

 the history of agriculture and prices during the hundred and 

 twenty years which are comprised in these volumes, what was 

 the position of the labourer as illustrated by the wages he 

 received and what was the condition of the farmer as indicated 

 by the price of the articles he used, the charges inevitably put 

 on his operations, and the price of what he sold. These 

 topics are reserved till I deal with the wages of labour and 

 the profits of agriculture. But it is not possible, in that 

 chapter of this work which deals with the distribution of 

 wealth, to omit all notice of the condition of the husbandman 

 and the labourer. The gains of the former are exceedingly 



