APPENDIX I 193 



for whose pretended natural productive capability such hand- 

 some rents are now paid, have at all times been the same 

 fields and meadows. The original natural productive capa- 

 bility of land is evidently so unimportant, and affords to the 

 person using it so small an excess of products, that the rent 

 derivable from it alone is not worth mentioning. All Canada 

 in its original state (inhabited merely by hunters) would yield 

 in meat and skins scarcely enough income to pay the salary 

 of a single Oxonian professor of political economy. 



" The national productive capability of the soil in Malta 

 consists of rocks, which would scarcely have yielded a rent 

 at any time. If we follow up with the mind's eye the course 

 of the civilization of whole nations, and of their conversion 

 from the condition of hunters to the pastoral condition, and 

 from this to that of agriculture, etc., we may easily convince 

 ourselves that the rent everywhere was originally nil, and 

 that it rose everywhere with the progress of civilization, of 

 p(jpulation, and with the increase of mental and material 

 capital. 



" The basis of rent is the exclusive benefit or advantage 

 which the ground yields to that individual at whose exclusive 

 disposal it is placed ; and the greatness of this benefit is 

 determined especially according to the amount of available 

 mental and material capital in the community in which he is 

 placed, and also according to the opportunity which the special 

 situation and peculiar character of the property, and the 

 utilization of capital previously invested therein, affords to the 

 person exclusively possessing the property for obtaining 

 material values, or for satisfying mental and bodily require- 

 ments and enjoyments." 



'3 



