8 Agriculture and the Community. 



millions. If we assume that even three times as much 

 has been effected during the same period by private capital 

 without loans, we here see that the capital wealth of the 

 owners of landed property has been increased by three 

 hundred and thirty-one millions sterling in these twenty 

 years, at a cost to them which probably has not exceeded 

 sixty millions. This increase, as elsewhere explained, 

 has arisen chiefly from the great advance in the consump- 

 tion and value of meat and dairy produce, and is thus only 

 in part the result of land improvement." The two periods 

 of rapidly rising rents were those of the Napoleonic wars 

 and the European and American wars of the 'fifties (Ernie, 

 pp. 2IO and 372). Rising prices were followed by rising 

 rents. The value of the land was not increased by the 

 capital expenditure of the landowners, but because the 

 landowners were able to exact an unearned increment 

 from the consumers through the farmers. 



Even if we allow for the fall in rents during the last 

 twenty years of the 19th century, it is clear that a con- 

 siderable proportion of the payment made to landowners 

 in the form of rent cannot be reckoned as interest on 

 capital expended in improving the land. It ought also to 

 be remembered that the capital spent by the landlords 

 in improving the land was itself largely drawn from the 

 rents paid by tenants for the use of land. Whatever pro- 

 portion of rent may be reckoned as payment to the land- 

 lords for the use of the capital expended by them in 

 improving the land, it is obvious that from the point of 

 view of agriculture any payment made to the landowners 

 as economic rent for the unimproved land contributes 

 nothing to the value of the industry. It should be re- 



