221 



I 



aud that waste land, therefore, has no value.* But 

 we have only to consider the length of time over 

 which this outlay is spread, and to place against 

 it the accumulated wealth of the produce of the 

 land, and the fallacy is transparent. When rich 

 deposits are taken from the bottom of the Sea or 

 other place where they are not now utilized, and laid 

 on barren rocks, taut land may be called capital ; 

 but if so, it is capital not invested in, but capital 

 converted into land, and its value is determined not 

 by the cost of its formation : but by its fertility 

 and advantages in relation to other lands in the 

 neighbourhood. The exchange value of laud, like 

 that of every thing else, is affected by circumstances, 

 proximity to markets, population, roads, rivers, 

 climate; but there is still its power of produc- 

 tion, which the absence of any or all of these, though 

 it may put it out of the market, cannot annihi- 

 late. The diamond in the mine, gold in the rock, 

 any of the precious metals, so locked up, are subject 

 to very similar laws, and it appears to me absurd to 

 argue, that the one has intrinsic worth, while the 

 other which has inherent powers of producing the 



* Mr. Carey an American Economist in his " Principles of political 

 economy" asserts that all the land in any country is not equal i n value 

 to anything like the Capital that has been laid out on it; or in other 

 words that to bring- the land of a;iy country to its present condition 

 from a state of primoeval forest, would not pay. He concludes from 

 this that all rent is the result of capital expended, which theory if 

 true would vitiate the principlea of a tax oa laud. 



