1831.] 
Answer to E. R. 
363 
there is abundance of good land on which to set it gratuitously to work, if it 
pleased the society so to appropriate the land. Here then we find a “ non-mono- 
polized natural agent , concurring in production, and giving its labour gratis 
and yet creating value. Yet Mr. McCulloch says, “in so far as non-inonopolized 
natural agents concur in production, they do what is done gratis. Their labours 
are often of vastly more consequence than those of man, or the capital produced 
by man ; but as they are performed spontaneously, they are neither valuable 
themselves, nor can they communicate that quality to any thing else.” A fall of 
water which shall propel mill works is a natural agent, which may be valuable in 
itself to its owner ; and may be productive of value also; it may he substituted 
for more expensive descriptions of labour ; and being a thing of rare occurrence, 
its appropriation may insure compensation for its use. This Mr. McCulloch would 
call a monopolized natural agent productive of value. The good lands of a coun- 
try being all appropriated, and vegetable life being a natural agent which oi ly 
acts advantageously to man upon such land ; this also, according to Mr. McCulloch 
is, in a fully peopled country, a monopolized natural agent, productive of value ; 
and in both these cases the rent, or compensation, for the use of the fall of water, 
and for the use of the soil, proceed from the same cause, exclusive appropriation, 
or, as he terms it, monopoly. But are the two cases parallel ? in both of these do 
the natural agents co-operate with man in the same manner? The mill stream, 
to my apprehension, aids man in the mere work of modifying and changing 
existing qualities in bodies ; while the vivifying principle co-operates with man, 
by enabling him from one thing destroyed possessing a specific quality to get an 
increase of perhaps a thousand similar things possessing similar qualities in return. 
Can it be believed that this is a difference of no importance, and can i. be asserted 
that it is a difference which political economists have so noted and attended to, tbal 
no occasion does exist for call ing to their minds the axiom which I would entoicc, 
namely that wealth can only be periodically reproduced and increased, “by well 
directed industry, when co-operating with the vital principle inherent in the 
reserved stock of seed ?” 
When a sufficient cause is shown to exist for the evolution of more than \\ ill 
cover outlay in capital and in labour, and more than sufficient foi profits besides, 
a sufficient cause is shown for the evolution of rent ; whether the appropriation of 
matrix wherein this cause operates, be complete or not; oi in Mr. 
Maculloch’s phrase, whether monopoly exists or not. This sufficient cause is, 
1 submit, to be found in the influence of the living principle alone ; and this suffi- 
cient cause I maintain to have been greatly, if not entirely, ou t looked by 
recent writers on political economy; most certainly by all those who insist that 
monopoly is the sole cause of rent, it has been overlooked ; and by none mo e 
particularly than by him, who maintains, that the exclusi\e possession ol 
Wate r is a similar possession, with respect to wealth, as exclusive pioputy in 
the soil. 
But I find I am running over ground already marked by my own f° 0 ^ s I ’ 
l '>atthc present and former prints are falling nearly on the same spots , )cm< , 
* am dwelling too long on an uninviting theme. • H mr that 
% motive is a desire to have my mind satisfied one way oi ot or , e\ 
casting theories are right ; or that they are wrong ; and I sha ee S ie ‘ ... 
u, ber toE. R. or to any other of the contributors to the Gleanings, i » 
P 1U me in the way of obtaining the satisfaction which I *eek. • 
Redded to my own conceits ; and if it can be shown that the e*is in o 
^ s ball gladly throw them off from me for ever. 
