The Descent of the Landlords. 407 



beyond its proper limits. Moreover without it much of the 

 wheat-growing area of British soil would be mere rabbit warren 

 and heath. 



Its opponents, on the other hand, contended that all the 

 good it effected went to swell the landlord's purse — that if the 

 demand for corn was greater than the supply, naturally more 

 corn would be grown ; that as its production progressively 

 increased, inferior lands would be brought into cultivation, 

 and that this process merely increased the landlord's rental. 

 The very words of the Quarterly Review are worthy of quota- 

 tion, for they give that theory of rents which Ricardo was 

 just then advancing. "Does he not know," the writer says, 

 apostrophising the landlord, " that if the demand for corn is 

 greater than the supply, more corn will be grown '? Does 

 he not know that lands of the first class of fertility will be 

 first occupied? that as the production of corn progressively 

 increases, inferior lands must be brought into cultivation ? 

 If brought into cultivation, does he not know that they must, 

 ex vi terminij repay, with the ordinary profits of stock, the 

 expense incurred in their cultivation ? Does he not know 

 that his own tenant, occupying land of a superior quality, is 

 only led to expect to make the same profits which a man 

 cultivating land of an inferior quality is found to make? 

 Does he not know that the difference of the money price of 

 the produce raised by these two parties is, in the present 

 circumstances of this country, the measure of his rent?" 



AVe think the leaseholding farmer might, if he had chosen, 

 have shown this writer a balance sheet which would have 

 effectually negatived this last query. The landlord, too, could 

 have pointed out that though rents may or may not affect 

 prices, the effects of free trade and foreign competition on rents 

 would be to hand over the greater portion of profits to the 

 foreign landowner. 



If protection was crippling the foreign market for the manu- 

 facturer, free trade was about to cripple the home market for 

 the farmer. This view of the case was promulgated by some 

 of the ablest economists of the time. Ricardo in 1822, and 

 McCulloch in 1841, warned the Government that if they 



