fluence to increase rents; but if carried beyond a certain point it is disastrous to the general interests of the community. If it were not for the fact that the rates for the relief of the poor are to a very great extent a charge on land, this antagonism of interest would be much more powerful than it is. If the landlords were relieved from the cost of pauperism it would be actually advantageous to the pecuniary interests of the owners of the soil that people should marry recklessly, and bring large families into existence, so that population might be increased and rents raised. Regarded from this point of view, it is a wise precaution which has entailed on landlords the disagreeable as well as (to them) agreeable results of over-population. If landlords were relieved from bearing the cost of pauperism they would really grow rich on the improvidence of the poor. The very same circumstance which produced the increased wealth of the one class would deepen the misery and degradation of the other. Hence while the landlord was becoming more and more wealthy, the struggle for existence among the very poor would become more and more intense. The tendency of this antagonism of interest is to a great extent counterbalanced by the cost of pauperism; and there are fortunately many other respects in which the interests of the owners of land and those of the general community are identical.

In some respects the Interests of Landlord, Capitalist, and Labourer, are identical. Notwithstanding that increased pauperism and increased rents arise from the same cause, it does not follow that the interests of landowners and of other classes are necessarily opposed under all circumstances. On the contrary, the interests of the landlord, the capitalist, and the labourer, are in some respects the same. All are interested in rendering land, capital, and labour, as productive as possible. It is conceivable that some agencies may vastly increase the productive power of land, labour, and capital; in this case the share of wealth allotted to each might be increased, because there would be more to distribute as rent to the landlord, profits to the capitalist, and wages to the labourers. A few years ago the wages paid to agricultural labourers in the South of England were

so low, and at the same time the prices of food were so comparatively high, that it was contended that the efficiency of the labourer was very materially reduced. The labourer was habitually underfed, and unsuitably clothed, he became prematurely old and feeble; this being so, many who knew intimately what his daily life was, asserted that if he were a slave or a cart horse it would serve the pecuniary interests of his owner to feed, house and clothe him better than he could afford to feed, house and clothe himself upon his wages. It was therefore argued that if the labourer received higher wages, his labour would become more efficient and he would consequently be a more valuable servant to his employer. The improvement in the labourers' condition which has lately taken place, did not however proceed from the enlightened self-interest of their employers. It was due to a combination of causes among which may be mentioned, Ist. the great fall in the price of provisions consumed by the labourers such as cheese and bacon, owing to the recent great importation of these things from America. This raised the daily standard of comfort of the entire class. 2ndly, the gradual spread of education awakened the agricultural labourer to the fact that he was worse off than other labourers; he became discontented with wages at 9s. a week; railways and steamships gave him (materially speaking) the power to move to places where his labour would be better paid; the energy and enterprise which were the result of education gave him the moral power which the move required. Until a few years ago the agricultural labourers were practically excluded from the influence of competition. They were too ignorant and too timid to leave their homes in search of better paid employment. They were almost as incapable of independent action as the sheep and cattle they tended in the field. Now however this state of things has come to an end; there is a constant flow of population out of the agricultural counties into the manufacturing counties. It is perhaps too soon at present to say what the effect of this change will be on rent and on the profits of the farmers; it may however be confidently hoped, that, when

the present rather transitional condition of things is over, all the three classes engaged in agriculture will benefit from the improvement in the intelligence and material comfort of the labourer. One fact may be mentioned in support of the reasonableness of this expectation. In Scotland and in Northumberland, the labourers have long been in a position very greatly superior to the labourers in the South of England; they are better educated, better housed and better paid; and not only are rents higher and the general condition of agriculture more satisfactory, but the labour bill on farms of a similar size and nature is actually less in those districts where wages are high than in those where wages are low. The labour bill of two farms of 380 acres, each requiring the same kind of labour, the one in Aberdeenshire and the other in Norfolk, have lately been compared; the Scotch labourers were paid 20s. a week, the Norfolk labourers 14s., yet the labour bill for the year was only £510 in Aberdeenshire compared with the £800 in Norfolk. The superior intelligence and energy of the labourer thus more than compensated the Scotch farmer for the higher rate of wages he was paying.

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Population not a measure of National Prosperity. There are a vast number of economic problems which will be solved with perfect readiness by those who have a thorough grasp of Ricardo's theory of rent. A right understanding of this theory and of the proposition enunciated in Section 1. that a demand for commodities is not a demand for labour, will enable the student to detect and avoid some of the most common fallacies, which are often propounded as if they were self-evident truths. Such, for instance, as the statement so often either expressed, or implied in the newspapers and elsewhere, that the prosperity of all countries is accurately measured by the growth of their population—that in proportion as population increases, national prosperity also increases. This statement is, no doubt, within certain limits true, in a country like Australia, where there is abundance of fertile land, and where consequently the necessaries of life are very cheap. In such a country an increase of population augments

the national wealth because an additional supply of labour is wanted to develope its great natural resources. But in some countries, such as India, an immense increase has taken place in the population, without a corresponding mal increase in wealth; the standard of comfort of the populabereite tion has been lowered and vast numbers are constantly living just on the verge of pauperism and starvation. The people have no reserve of any kind and the failure of a crop immediately brings the pinch of want; they cannot meet bad times by giving up luxuries in order to buy necessaries; they have no luxuries; they have no cheaper kind of food to which they can resort; they are already at the bottom of the scale of human existence and to fall any lower means actual famine. It is obvious that in a country in such a situation as this, increase of population is in itself no indication of increased prosperity.

Rent does not increase the price of Agricultural produce. One of the most important conclusions deduced from Ricardo's theory is, that rent does not form a part of the price of agricultural produce; or, in other words, that agricultural produce would be no cheaper if all rents were remitted. We have seen that the price of agricultural produce is determined by the position of the margin of cultivation. The price of the produce must be such as to remunerate the capital and labour expended in tilling the worst land in cultivation which pays no rent. If prices were less, this land would cease to be cultivated, and the margin of cultivation would rise. But this cannot take place because the demand for agricultural produce would not be diminished by the remission of rents, and therefore as large a quantity of agricultural produce would be required as before; and, as previously stated, the demand for agricultural produce determines the position of the margin of cultivation.

The rent of land, regulated by competition and consisting of the excess of its return above the return of the worst land in cultivation, is called the rack-rent.

One of the objections sometimes urged against Ricardo's theory is, that there can be no cultivated land rent free, as all farmers have to pay rent. It is no doubt true that there

are few farms entirely composed of land which is so unproductive that it yields no rent; but many farms contain portions of such land, and though the rent may be reckoned upon the total number of acres of which the farm is composed, the rent would not be decreased if that land were subtracted which yields only sufficient produce to give the ordinary rate of profit to the cultivator, and to pay the wages of the labour expended in its cultivation. It is also objected to Ricardo's theory that farmers and landlords know nothing about it and do not regulate the rent of land in accordance with it. This is something like saying that the discoveries of anatomists must be wrong because most people live all their lives without knowing how their bodies are put together. People can eat what agrees with them without knowing anything of the process of digestion, and they can pay or receive a rack-rent without ever having heard of Ricardo's theory.

The influence of custom on Rents. Throughout this chapter it has been assumed that rents are entirely regulated by competition. In England and Scotland this is almost invariably the case, but in most countries custom has a powerful influence in regulating rents. In some parts of Italy and France, for instance, a tenure prevails, called the metayer tenure, in which the produce of the soil is divided in a certain fixed proportion between the owner of the land and the cultivator. This proportion is usually one half, but in some districts the owner of the land receives as much as two thirds. The proportion allotted to the landlord is fixed by custom, and not by competition. Custom also regulates what part of the capital necessary for tilling the soil shall be provided by the landlord. In some places he supplies all the stock, implements and seed, which the cultivation of the land requires; in other districts the landlord furnishes the cattle and the seed, and the labourer provides the implements. The customs seem to be quite arbitrary, and are controlled by no fixed rule. Political economy cannot therefore define what circumstances determine the proportion in which the produce of a farm is distributed between the metayer tenant and his landlord.