RENTS, PROFITS, AND WAGES. 83 



gence, and labour, have co-operated to realise it, is found 

 to be greater for each in England than it is in France. 



In the first place, we take the rent paid to the pro- 

 prietor of the land, or the return upon capital invested. 

 The notion of rent is not so clearly defined in France as 

 it is in England ; it is confounded with the farmer's profit 

 and return for working capital when the proprietor directs 

 the cultivation himself, and even with wages properly 

 so called, when he cultivates his property with his own 

 hands. The average rent of land in France may, how- 

 ever, be reckoned at 30 francs per hectare that is to 

 say, the net return on capital sunk, after deducting all 

 return for working capital, wages, and profit ; say a total 

 of fifteen hundred millions on our fifty millions of 

 hectares, cultivated and uncultivated together. 



Owing to the system of cultivation carried on in Eng- 

 land, which almost always discriminates between pro- 

 prietorship and tenancy, it is more correctly known what, 

 previously to 1848, was the rent from landed property 

 in the different parts of the United Kingdom. 



We find the minimum rent in the extreme north of 

 Scotland Sutherlandshire and the adjacent islands 

 where it is as low as 1.25 francs per hectare of nominal, 

 or 1 franc of comparative value (4d. per acre). The whole 

 of the Highlands, containing, as we have seen, nearly four 

 millions of hectares, do not yield on an average more 

 than 3 francs per hectare to the proprietors (Is. per acre). 

 The maximum is obtained from meadow-lands in the 

 environs of London and Edinburgh, which let as high as 

 30 per acre; rents of 8, 5, and 3 per acre are 

 not uncommon in the Lothians, and in the neighbour- 

 hood of large towns in England. All the centre of the 

 island, including Leicestershire and the counties sur- 

 rounding it, gives an average of 30s. per acre (100 francs 



