the tenant's share being an estimate of the capital invested 

 in the cultivation of the land, augmented by an allow- 

 ance for the time and skill devoted by the farmer in the 

 active employment of that capital. This may be called 

 the partnership principle, for the sake of distinction. 



Finally, those who maintain that the only true principle 

 of valuation is the letting value of land in its district, irre- 

 spective of any other considerations. 



VI. ON THE RESERVATION OF ONE-THIRD OF THE GROSS 



PRODUCE AS RENT. 



Political Economists have divided the great instruments 

 of agricultural production into three classes: labour, 

 capital, and land; and in like manner they have spoken 

 of the produce itself as divisible into three proportions 

 wages, profit, and rent. 



This, however, was never meant to countenance the 

 theory that one-third of the gross produce of land should 

 uniformly be taken as the standard of rent; on the con- 

 trary, Dr. Longfield, late Professor of Political Economy in 

 the University of Dublin, when asked by the Devon Com- 

 mission 



" Have you formed any opinion as to the proportion 

 which rent ought to bear to the aggregate produce of a 

 farm?" replied: 



" I consider it perfectly impossible to form an accurate 

 opinion upon such proportion. Among all those who are 

 called political economists, however they disputed upon 

 other matters and were not disposed to agree with each 

 other, they all agree upon this that there is no fixed pro- 

 portion between produce and rent; that it must depend 

 upon the state of the country, and, at the same time, the 

 state of the land. There are lands upon which one-half 

 would not be too much, and others upon which one-fifth 

 would be excessive. It is well known that the sum neces- 

 sary to be laid out on a crop varies. f ' 



' ' Is it your opinion that a calculation founded upon the 



