238 Mr. Faraday on 



manufactured products in exchange for the produce im- 

 ported has tended to draw labour from the rural estates to 

 the manufacturing districts, and it would appear that the 

 natural consequence would, in the end, be higher agricultural 

 wages ; the payment of such wages should imply more 

 efficient labour, and, consequently, increased production 

 from the land. This has avowedly been the result in the 

 north of England, where agricultural wages are higher than 

 they are in the east and south, and farming is, nevertheless, 

 more profitable. Such a process, though it may be slow> 

 clearly tends to promote the distribution of wealth. 



It is, probably, in consequence of the attention given to 

 Mill's " natural monopoly " of land and to Anderson and 

 Ricardo's theory of rent, before the development of 

 railways, steam navigation, and ocean telegraphy had, by 

 practically annihilating distance, brought new factors into 

 play, that the influence of monetary law on the distri- 

 bution of wealth has been so generally overlooked. I have 

 been led to inquire into this influence. We have seen 

 that such undue congestion of wealth as that under con- 

 sideration arises, according to collectivist theories on the 

 subject, from the development of an unearned increment 

 from capital or land ; that is, an increase of value due 

 to circumstances or conditions which the recipient has 

 had no part in bringing about, or, in other words, an income 

 which is not in any sense the payment of additional services 

 rendered. With such services I would include the service 

 of the speculator, who stores the surplus abundance of 

 to-day to provide for the deficiency of to-morrow. Such 

 increment is, of course, based on an increase in the exchange- 

 able, or loanable, value of the thing possessed, caused 

 by arbitrary influences of a temporary or permanent 

 character. Thus, meteorological conditions, in bringing 

 about a failure of growing crops in the United States 

 and India, may greatly enhance the exchangeable 



