124 History of the English Landed Interest. 



as the above. According to him the origin of rent is the 

 limited quantity of land in comparison with the competition 

 for its produce. The phrase " Margin of Cultivation " was as 

 strange to him as his own phrase " Division of Labour " had 

 been to the economists before him. And yet he recognised 

 the situation created by a " margin of cultivation," though he 

 failed to put it to any practical use in his theory of rents. He 

 says : " Such parts only of the produce of land can commonly 

 be brought to market of which the ordinary price is sufficient 

 to replace the stock which must be employed in bringing them 

 thither, together with its ordinary profits. If the ordinary 

 price is more than this, the surplus part of it will naturally go 

 to the rent of land. If it is not more, though the commodity 

 can be brought to market, it can afford no rent to the land- 

 lord." 1 



But in a mind which had such exaggerated ideas of the 

 advantages of agriculture, the possibility of land being in- 

 capable of affording rent to the landlord did not make any 

 lasting impression. He rather insisted that any land must be 

 capable of producing more than the food necessary to support all 

 the labour required to bring its produce to market, and there- 

 fore that it must of necessity be capable of producing a rent 

 to the landlord. Though from his point of view there was no 

 distinction between the rent of mines and that of the soil, he 

 would not admit that the circumstances which often prevented 

 the first description of property from yielding a profit to the 

 landlord could ever apply to the last. " Yet Adam Smith," as 

 says Dr. Cunningham, " can hardly have meant to deny, what 

 was certainly familiar to Sir James Stewart, and is rarely for- 

 gotten by British farmers, that it is possible to grow corn at a 

 loss."^ 



According to Smith, then, the landlords possessed a 

 monopoly in the soil ; and therefore it followed that every 

 improvement in, or encouragement of, agriculture merely 

 increased those surplus profits which the farmer, after abstract- 



* Wealth of Nations, Bk. I. ch. xi. p. 200, 5tli ed. 



* Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Pt. II. p. 5G5. Cunning- 

 ham. 



