ON THE THEORY OF BENT. 537 



Of course the same ratiocination may be applied to every species of 

 crop : rent is always the result of comparative fertility. 



Rent is, therefore, the practical expression of the excess of fertility of 

 land beyond that productive power which characterises the least fertile 

 land, of which the produce comes into the market, where the comparative 

 value is determined. 



And we are now witnessing a practical and interesting illustration and 

 proof of this. There has been a falling off in the quantity of land cul- 

 tivated in the United Kingdom to the extent of about a million of acres 

 in ten years — about a ninth part of the area in cultivation in 1877. 

 These abandoned acres were certainly not the most fertile, but the least 

 fertile. The cost of producing crops from these acres must therefore 

 have been the highest, because the cost of cultivation of the least fertile 

 land, reckoned on its produce, must always be greatest. The cost of 

 cultivating the least fertile land in cultivation is therefore now much 

 less than it was ten years ago, because there were then in cultivation a 

 million of acres poorer than any acres now cultivated ; and therefore the 

 difference between the cost of cultivating the very poorest cultivated land 

 and the very richest is now much less than it was ; the horizon of con- 

 trast has been narrowed. But rent, we have seen, is just the difference 

 between the cost of cultivating the poorest land that will pay for cultiva- 

 tion and other lands more fertile, and therefore what we call the fall of 

 rent is really the exclusion of poor land from cultivation, and the conse- 

 quent reduction of the margin between the very poorest land and the 

 several gradations of better land that mark the several degrees of fertility. 

 If we could imagine this process of reduced cultivation to go on until only 

 the richest laud, all of uniform fertility, were cultivated, rent would dis- 

 appear, and we should be face to face with the paradox that land so rich 

 as to defy competition would return nothing to its proprietor. What is 

 the explanation or solution of this paradox? it is this, that according to 

 the theory which has commended itself to all judgment, rent is the 

 measure of comparative fertility, and where there is no comparison there 

 can be no measure. Stated otherwise, land must first yield recompense 

 for the labour and capital expended upon it before it can be cultivated, 

 and the theory of rent requires cultivation as the necessary antecedent 

 to rent. 



And like all social paradoxes this one vanishes when examined. It 

 assumes all but the richest land to be thrown out of cultivation. That 

 implies a gradual reduction of rent as step by step the poorer land dis- 

 appears — fades away because it will not pay to cultivate : the richest land 

 survives, because it does pay to cultivate, but it will pay only the cost of 

 cultivation because the competition or other cause which has eaten up 

 the poorer land will eat up that excess beyond cost which, if it could 

 have existed, would have kept the last expiring grade of land in culti- 

 vation. Labour, capital, and skill will struggle for their subsistence to 

 the last. 



Thus, when closely analysed, we find in the phenomena we examine 

 the usual alternation of cause and effect acting and reacting. Prices fall ; 

 the poor land that yields little and costs much to work loses the little 

 margin on which it lived, and goes out of cultivation ; the maximum cost 

 of production is thereby reduced, and the worth of the best land is 

 reduced by a corresponding measure. The connection between the fall 

 of price and the fall of rent is not direct and immediate ; it is therefore 



