102 AGRICULTURE AND TARIFF REFORM. 



tial product," as essential in fact as the bricks 

 from which are made the walls of one's dwelling- 

 house. The latter authority adds that the soil 

 " receives an income of heat and light and rain 

 and air," and in the case of urban land " of 

 advantages of situation, all of which are inde- 

 pendent of man's efforts." It is, however, clear 

 from this process of reasoning that if an owner of 

 land, as Mr. Grarnier has pointed out, " shares 

 in the cost of production " by an expenditure of 

 capital, he is entitled to a reasonable rent, and 

 also " of the protection of the community." What 

 a " reasonable " rent is may be left to the man 

 who willingly takes laud and to the man who 

 willingly lets it, which is a common practice, we 

 are glad to say, in this countr3^ 



Whatever rents are nowadays, it may cer- 

 tainly be said that they do not represent 

 anything like such a return on the capital in- 

 vested in the purchase and improvement of the 

 laud and buildings as would satisfy any manufac- 

 tuvor or any other trader or merchant on his outlay. 

 ^\'e do not say that rents are not too high in some 

 individual cases; but Sir James Caird, in 188G, 

 estimated that there had been a fall of some 30 

 per cent, up to that time, whilst the Eoj-al Com- 

 mission on Agriculture in 189 T reported that 

 with some exceptions, chiefly in Wales, where 

 remissions had been made instead, reductions in 

 rent had been generiJ, varying from 10 and oO 

 per cent, in the least distressed districts to, in the 

 most distressed parts of England, 50 and in some 



