1831.] 
Of the Evolution of Rent, rfyc. 
307 
Superior to those, who propose to appropriate an equal extent of new land ; 
and this difference in their circumstances will immediately be known, by the 
readiness with which other poorer capitalists would offer rent for permission to 
make use of the land. Those who are possessed of sufficient capital will of course 
proceed to the new tracts ; and when these are brought on the footing of the old 
ones, these persons will be in the same circumstances as the owners of the old 
lands, and will have the option, as these had, of accepting rent, or of continuing in 
their own persons the double office of landlord and farmer. 
But although, for the sake of shewing distinctly the gradual rise and progress of 
the different incomes of the mere labourer, the capitalist, and the landlord, I have 
started with the supposition that, in the first instance, the food realized was only a 
recompense for the labour actually sunk in obtaining it, and although, in the veriest 
infancy of knowledge, this might have been the case in many parts of the world ; 
still when in the more favored regions, we come to consider the extraordinary 
fecundity of every species of useful plants and animals ; when we contemplate the 
goodness of God towards us, in placing at our command, as the means of our subsis- 
tence, bring germs which of themselves work that wonderful yearly increase by which 
^ are enabled to enrich ourselves, it will be natural to suppose that in the better 
soils and climates the food of man will always, afterdue knowledge has been acquired, 
hare been obtainable, with much less than man’s unremitting exertion ; and that the 
persons possessed of the land must, consequently, always have had a command of 
greater labour than was sufficient for the mere work of agriculture. We may 
grant therefore, without doing violence to the principles with which we started, 
that after the knowledge of applying capital in the most ordinary manner to pro- 
duction, and after the modes of its practical application have become known, it 
"ill be found, that the continuous labour necessary for producing food is much 
Ifss than the food obtained in return will suffice to support. But this food will, 
notwithstanding 1 , command as much labour as can be supported by it whilst it lasts ; 
because of the inevitable law of population, to which man is subject ; and owing to 
w hich, there must ever be poor labourers springing into being, ready to offer their 
continuous and unceasing exertions, for what suffices to yield them continued support; 
ai) d although the employment on the soil of very small capitals in the most obvious and 
simple ways, may he in the power of almost every one in a new and under-peopled 
country, and may suffice for yielding the merest necessaries of life; still this maybe 
frrfrom securing to the indigent, as ample a supply of food, as those already in the 
possession of clear tracts of land can afford to give : a command of the laboui of the 
indigent, must therefore, I apprehend, be very shortly secured to the proprietors of 
hacts already in tillage. The power of obtaining more food than supports the 
hbour with which it is obtained, must be an advantage enjoyed only by the owncis 
°f cultivated tracts and holders of sufficient capital ; and on these accounts, wherever 
the land is rendered capable of yielding quantities of food, bearing a large proportion 
t° the labour^sunk, it will be found, whether rent be paid or not to a • distinct class 
°t land-owners, that the elements of this denomination of income do x*eall> exist; 
f° r the land-owners and capitalists must be in better circumstances than those 
"ho are not possessed of the soil, and of accumulations wherewith to bring new 
tracts into tillage. And in consequence, it eventually comes to be a matter of 
c hoice with them, provided their possessions are sufficiently extensiv e, w hetlier they 
"hll themselves keep capital in employment or not; many being necessarily leady 
to offer them rent for the use of that which is already in a fit state to be the 
^ a trix, in which alone that reproduction and increase goes on, which not on y 
wherewithal to reproduce the capital, and support the labour bestow ed upo 
a considerable excess besides. 
