POLITICAL ECONOMY. 



the occupier may choono to give may, in short, do with hia 



i !' visions may do in a timo of .- 



with i noe, that the proprietor may force his prices 



aly on hia customer. 



Again, the competition between the owner and occupier is 

 not free, unless the hitter him a choioo of callings or indno- 

 In (in .it. !;.. mi it in probable that not more than an 

 : population is engaged in cultivating the soil. If 

 a labourer then finds that ho cannot maintain himself by the 

 wages of husbandry, he can perhaps betake himself to some 

 ( work. There can be no doubt that manufactured 

 and mining hare absorbed, and do continually absorb, a largo 

 HJ agricultural population, for wages of farm labourers 

 are always highest in the neighbourhood of collieries and uianu- 

 :i's. Again, if a farmer finds that he cannot live by his 

 gets less by his calling than other persons 

 engaged in business do he may strive to extricate himself from 

 this calling, and devote his capital to some other kind of in- 

 . If he cannot easily do so in his own person, ho will 

 not bring his sons up to the business in which he is engaged ; 

 and so, sooner or later, other occupations being opened, the 

 number of persons competing for farms will diminish, and rents 

 will be proportionately reduced. But when, on the other hand, 

 as in Ireland, half the population at least is engaged in agri- 

 culture, the transition is not so easy, and the conditions of fair 

 competition are absent. The occupier, as the saying is, " must 

 live ;" he must, in order to live, pay the price demanded for the 

 means of life ; and as long as ho gets enough to subsist on, all 

 that ia in excess of this amount may be exacted from him under 

 the name of rent. When, under the old system in Ireland, the 

 little farms of the cottiers were annually put up to auction, the 

 cottiers often bid six or seven times as much rent as they could 

 possibly pay. The rent, in short, was the extremest tax which 

 the landlord could exact from his tenant for permission to live. 



Now, however, if wo suppose that the conditions of free com- 

 petition are satisfied, we may bo able to see what is meant by 

 the remainder of the definition given above. We shall be best 

 able to illustrate it by a few simple figures. Let us suppose 

 that the rate of profit, as the word is commonly used, acquired 

 by those who practise such callings as those of a farmer, 

 amounts to ten per cent, on the capital which they employ, and 

 that a farmer's capital is ,3,000 ; he must, under these circum- 

 stances, expect to obtain .300 a year by his calling, free of all 

 costs and charges, and on my hypothesis will accept nothing 

 less, but will prefer to give up his farming, and take to some 

 other kind of business instead. Let us further suppose that he 

 occupies 300 acres of land, for which he pays a rent of ^6300, 

 the question is, How is he able to pay this rent ? The only 

 answer can be as follows : He is able (after deducting all the 

 charges to which he is liable while cultivating land, as wages 

 to labour, wear and tear of agricultural implements, deprecia- 

 tion of other stock) to find his .3,000 at the end of the year 

 not only unimpaired, but increased by .600 more. Of this sum 

 a moiety represents his profit, the other remains as rent, and 

 by the condition of competition remains to the landowner, who, 

 if this farmer was unwilling to pay so much, would find some 

 other fanner who would be content to occupy the land on such 

 terms. Kent, then, is determined by what the land produces, 

 what it costs to get that produce, and what that produce will 

 Bell for when it is gotten. I need scarcely add, too, that it is 

 an average of these variable quantities, and that sometimes, as 

 is the case with every kind of business, the farmer gets a greater, 

 sometimes a less amount of profit. 



Rent, then, increases in quantity with improvement in agri- 

 cultural skill, as soon as that improvement becomes general. 

 As long as any ability or skill is confined to one farmer or a 

 few, such an individual, just as any other discoverer does, can 

 secure the fruit of his own superior intelligence. I have already 

 drawn a contrast between the state in which the art of agricul- 

 ture was some centuries ago, and that in which it is now, and 

 stated that during this time rents have prodigiously increased. 

 They have increased, because the cost of production has di- 

 uiini-diod greatly when compared with the quantity produced, I 

 and because, owing to the growth of population, the demand [ 

 has been fully up to the increased supply. If, indeed, population 

 increases, and the supply were to temporarily diminish, the 

 price of food would increase, and the farmer would profit. If j 

 the supply were to permanently diminish, owing to natural . 



cauaea, aa a aeriea of bad harvest*, or to artificial 

 the enactment of a law which prohibited the importation of food, 

 the profit would reat with the landowner, a* it did or sssniid to 

 ng the time in which the Corn Uwa existed. These lava 

 did not, indeed, prove of ao much advantage to the landowner aa 

 waa expected, for what he gained by the exalted price of wheat 

 he lost by the depressed price of other articles of agricultural 

 produce. 



What applies to agricultural land applies equally, though not 

 ao plainly, to the rent of ahops and bouses, the natural price of 

 the lattor being occasionally disturbed by the fact alludttd to 

 above, that there ia often a monopoly price for building sites, 

 and therefore a great exaltation in their market value. The 

 reason why the rent of a shop in a leading London thorough- 

 fare is often treble that of another ahop, placed in a locality 

 which is either not so fashionable or not BO frequented, is to be 

 found in the fact that the overplus, after the average rate of 

 profit is deducted, obtained from carrying on business in the 

 former situation, is such as to enable the owner of the shop or 

 site to exact from the competition of traders so great a rent for 

 the premises. 



Bent, then, is the result of an economical law. The land- 

 owner wrongs no one by getting his rent. If rents were extin- 

 guished to-morrow prices would not fall, for the occupier would 

 simply add the rent to his profits, and appropriate the rent, 

 instead of paying it to his landlord ; and for the same reason 

 rent does not enter into prices. If rents were violently extin- 

 guished, a loaf of bread or a pound of mutton would not be sold 

 a farthing cheaper, for the price of these articles depends on 

 the quantity which there is in existence, and on the demand 

 which the consumers exhibit for them. It may perhaps be the 

 case, that rent under certain circumstances enters into the price 

 of manufactured articles, and into that of articles sold by retail. 

 The ground-rent of a cotton-mill must, it seems, enter, though 

 to an infinitesimal amount, into the price of cotton cloth, for it 

 is part of the cost of producing the cloth. It would seem, too, 

 that in a still larger degree the price of an expensive shop in a 

 fashionable street must enter into the price of the articles sold 

 there. At first, the rent was derived from the extraordinary 

 profits obtained. In time, perhaps, the rent is treated as a 

 charge, and reacts on the price ; but this effect is, after all, 

 limited. Nothing is commoner than to see " London prices," 

 by which is meant low prices, advertised. Now, rents in London 

 are far higher than in other towns. The cheapness is derived 

 from the number of transactions effected. 



There is one other point which I must advert to briefly in con- 

 clusion. There is a perpetual debate as to whether large or 

 small farming is most advantageous. The general solution of 

 this debate is to be obtained from two considerations one eco- 

 nomical, the other social. Some kinds of produce can doubtlessly 

 be best produced on a largo scale, as, for example, corn and 

 fat stock. But other kinds of produce, as that of the dairy and 

 the poultry-yard, are best obtained on a small system of farm- 

 ing, because they require incessant attention. So, again, the 

 cultivation of fruits, the vine, the olive, and in our country the 

 market-garden, is best managed by small farming. The exces- 

 sive dearness of butter, poultry, eggs, fruit, in England, and 

 the great importation of such articles from abroad, are due to 

 the aggregation of small farms, and the growth of the largo 

 farming system. Now there is no doubt that such a dearness 

 is an evil severely felt by the working classes, and no smsll 

 hardship to those who are better off. 



The social consequences of these rival systems are equally 

 marked. Large fanning may be carried to such an extent as 

 to make a desert of a district during the greater part of the 

 year, or at best to enrich a few farmers at the cost of reducing 

 nearly all tho labourers to poverty. / race of thrifty and 

 intelligent husbandmen, who have a prospect of plenty before 

 them, if not of wealth, is surely a social good. There is ore* 

 whelming testimony to the prudence, diligence, and morality ol 

 peasant farmers, while the ignorance and occasional vices of 

 tliis class of men are due to exceptional and remediable causes, 

 It is possible that such a class of persons in England has been 

 irrecoverably lost, but it has been lost disadvaiitageoosly. At 

 any rate, the present condition of the English agricultural 

 labourer, who fills the place of the peasant farmer elsewhere, 

 is not that on which statesman or philanthropist can look with 

 satisfaction. 



