6i8 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



would have the power at the expiration of his lease, of obliging him 

 to pay fifteen quarters or an equivalent value for the additional 

 rent; for there cannot be two rates of profit. If he is satisfied with 

 a diminution of fifteen quarters in the return for his second 1,000, 

 it is because no other employment more profitable can be found for 

 it. The common rate of profit would be in that proportion, and' if 

 the original tenant refused, some other person would be found willing 

 to give all which exceeded that rate of profit to the owner of the land 

 from which he derived it. 



In this case, as well as the other, the capital last employed pays 

 no rent. If a third 1,000 be employed on the same land, with a 

 return of seventy-five quarters, rent will then be paid for the second 

 1,000, and will be equal to the difference between the produce of 

 these two, or ten quarters; and at the same time the rent of the first 

 1,000 will rise from fifteen to twenty-five quarters; while the last 

 1,000 will pay no rent whatever. If, then, good land existed in a 

 quantity much more abundant than the production of food for an 

 increasing population required, or if capital could be indefinitely 

 employed without a diminished return on the old land, there would 

 be no rise of rent; for rent invariably proceeds from -the employ- 

 ment of an additional quantity of labor with a proportionally less 

 return. 



The most fertile and most favorably situated land will be first 

 cultivated, and the exchangeable value of its produce will be adjusted 

 in the same manner as the exchangeable value of all other commodities. 

 When land of an inferior quality is taken into cultivation, the 

 exchangeable value of raw produce will rise, because more labor is 

 required to produce it. The exchangeable value of all commodities 

 is regulated, not by the less quantity of labor that will suffice for their 

 production under circumstances highly favorable and exclusively 

 enjoyed by those who have peculiar facilities of production, but by 

 the greater quantity of labor necessarily bestowed on their production 

 by those who have no such facilities; by those who continue to produce 

 them under the most unfavorable circumstances; meaning by the 

 most unfavorable circumstances, the most unfavorable under which 

 the quantity of produce required renders it necessary to carry on their 

 production. 



The reason, then, why raw produce rises in comparative value, is 

 because more labor is employed in the production of the last portion 

 obtained, and not because a rent is paid to the landlord. The value 



