The Political Economist and the Land. 127 



in the prices of agricultural produce ; (c) a fall occurs in the 

 rate of wages or profits ; but principally {d) when any rapid 

 increase in the population arises. 



Apparently the margin of cultivation would also be extended 

 were rents abolished ; but in that event two occurrences would 

 be liable to occur; i.e., the producer's surplus would be in- 

 creased, and prices of farm produce lowered. Now, according 

 to the Ricardian theory, these two results would have dia- 

 metrically opposite effects on the margin of cultivation, which 

 would tend to spread in the first case and diminish in the 

 second. Are we to suppose, therefore, that these two opposing 

 forces would neutralise each other, and the margin of cultiva- 

 tion remain stationary ? That is exactly what would happen ; 

 but it is more scientifically accounted for by stating that as 

 the same cultivable area and the same rate of profits would be 

 required after as before the abolition of rents, it is clear that 

 both producer's profits and consumer's costs are determined 

 entirely by the rate of profit obtainable from lands at the 

 margin of cultivation. The important fact follows that corn 

 is not high because a rent is paid, but a rent is paid because 

 corn is high. The admission, however, of foreign produce 

 into the home market would have at once upset such reasoning 

 as this ; but then Ricardo never, as we shall see later on, 

 contemplated any such intruding factor into his calculations. 

 There is no doubt that the necessity for a protective tariff, 

 which his doctrines indirectly inculcate, exposed them to the 

 fierce antagonism of the Manchester school ; and so we find 

 the author of the Catechism of the Corn Laws attempting to re- 

 establish that less cordial relationship between the landlords and 

 the community which had been enunciated by Adam Smith.^ 



During the last hundred years the nature of rents has been 

 undergoing a rapid change. Even Smith in his day recog- 

 nised that the expression covered more than one species of re- 

 turn from the soil. Ricardo, when he defined it as " the price 

 paid for the enjoyment of the original indestructible powers 

 of the soil," knew just as well as Mill that many a farmer pays 



^ llie True Theory of Bents, by tlie author (Col. Tliompsou) of The 

 Catechism of the Corn Laics. 



