13s. 4d., (say $3 23,) while the present average rent, according to Mr. Caird, is 26s. 10d. (say $6 52); if the other six counties visited by Caird are taken into the account, the average rises to 278. 2d. The average rent of land in England has, according to these statements, more than doubled in the last eighty years. A very considerable difference exists between the rents of the grain-growing counties and those devoted to grazing and dairies. Mr. Caird gives as the average rent of fourteen corn-growing counties in the east and south of England, in 1851, 23s. 8d., while that of sixteen grazing, green crop, (turnips, &c., for feeding cattle,) and dairy counties, is 31s. 5d. The Edinburgh Review, for July, 1852, commenting upon these statements of Mr. Caird, for the purpose of exhibiting the relation between the improvements in agricultural machinery and processes, and the increase of rent, takes the case of a mixed corn, cattle, and husbandry farm, like those in the counties of Bedford and Norfolk, the average rent in which was as follows:

Supposing a farm in either of those counties to have been paying the average rent of 11s. 9d. per acre in 1770, the Reviewer proceeds to enumerate several improvements, to which an ascertained gain or saving per acre can be assigned, and estimates their value separately. The sum total amounts to 32s. 2d. But the increase of rent amounts to only 13s. 6d. The difference between the two, 18s. 8d., goes to the farmer. If his gains stopped here, it would be apparent that the smaller proportion of the increased produce had gone to rent, and the larger to remunerate the tenant. "But," continues the Reviewer, "besides the savings and gains above described, the farmer, in all parts of the kingdom, has had his returns greatly increased by the rise in price which has taken place in farm produce during the eighty years we are considering." Upon this point he states that, "While corn will bring in the market about the same price that it did eighty years ago, an amount of dairy produce, drawn from the stiff clays of Cheshire and Lancashire, which would

then sell for £100, is now worth £200; and the same is true to nearly an equal extent, of meat, wool, and butter." So far as grain is concerned, it is apparent that the increased profit of the landlord and farmer has not been gained at the expense of the consumer, since he obtains it at the same money price as before. We shall have occasion to show that the money price of labour has risen in England between the two periods taken for comparison,* and the extent of this rise diminishes in the same proportion the nominal advance in the cost of dairy produce. Any remark upon the subject is necessary here, only for the purpose of precluding an erroneous conclusion in respect to its real cost. The only question in which we are at present occupied, is that of the respective proportions in which the tenant and the landlord share the gains of husbandry. As this has to be deduced from the money prices of rent, the money prices of produce are an element in the calculation, though proving nothing as to its actual labour cost. Mr. Senior, writing nearly twenty years ago (1836), makes a statement, which coming from one of the ablest and the most generally correct thinkers of Mr. Ricardo's school, is pertinent evidence upon this point. "What changes," he remarks, "in the state of England and the southern parts of Scotland, have the steam-engine and the cotton machinery effected within the last sixty years! They have almost doubled the population, more than doubled the wages of labour, and nearly trebled the rent of land.”

* Mr. Caird gives a table, comparing the averages of rent, of the produce of wheat per acre, of the price of provisions, and of labourers' wages per week, as ascertained in twenty-six counties by Young, in 1770, and the same counties, as ascertained by himself in 1850, and then makes a separate average of the statements of each. The general result he sums up as follows:

"It thus appears that, in a period of eighty years, the average rent of arable land has risen 100 per cent., the average produce of wheat per acre has increased 15 per cent., the labourer's wages 34 per cent., (from 7s. 3d. per week to 98. 7d. per week,) and his cottage rent 100 per cent., (from 8d. per week to 18. 5d.); while the price of bread, the great staple of the food of the English labourer, is about the same as it was in 1770. (His average for twenty-six counties shows a reduction of about 16 per cent.) The price of butter has increased about 100 per cent, meat about 70 per cent., and wool upwards of 100 per cent."-English Agriculture in 1850 and 1851, page 475.

The agricultural statistics of England are so meagre and conjectural, that it is impossible to attain anything like numerical precision in inquiries of this character. They serve, however, to support that general observation of the current of affairs, in which the different writers we have quoted concur, and which proves that so far from any such tendency as the Ricardo theory requires, having been shown in the history of the British Islands, their experience establishes directly the reverse.

In respect to France we have more reliable information. Mons. Moreau de Jonnès, who for a long series of years has been at the head of the Statistical Bureau of the French Government, and has attained the highest rank in Europe as a statistician, occupied himself laboriously for years in deducing from the historical, economical, and administrative documents to which his situation gave him access, the facts bearing upon the condition and wages of the agriculturists of France. They were communicated in an extended memoir to the Institute, of which he is a member; and the general summary of the results is contained in an article contributed by him to the Annuaire de l'Economie Politique et de la Statistique, for 1851, pages 368 to 385. The inquiry extends back to the period of Louis XIV., embracing the experience of one hundred and fifty years, divided for the purposes of comparison into five periods. The facts as condensed in a tabular form are as follows:

The first table contains a statement of the aggregate expenditure, at different epochs, for the cultivation of the soil of France, (excluding the value of the seed,) in millions of francs-of the proportion which the sum-total of wages bore to the whole value of the product of the soil-and of the amount of such expenditure per head to the actual population of the kingdom, at each epoch, as follows :

:

The following statement gives the division of wages among the agricultural families of the kingdom, at the same period, upon the estimate that they averaged four and a half persons to a family,

giving the annual wages of each family, and the amount per day for each family :

labour with those of

M. De Jonnès compares these prices o wheat, for the purpose of seeing how far they would go in the respective periods towards supplying the prime necessities of life. He reckons that thirteen and a half hectolitres (the hectolitre is 2,83 bushels) of wheat, has been about the quantity of grain needed for the consumption of a family-needed more during the earlier than the latter periods, because its want is now, in a great degree, obviated by a variety of garden vegetables, formerly unknown or very little cultivated. He constructs a table giving the mean price of wheat, deduced from an average of the market for long series of years, under each reign, as follows:

The result of a comparison of the annual earnings of a family of agricultural labourers, with the cost of thirteen and a half hectolitres of wheat, required for their annual consumption, is given in the following table :—

*The centime is the hundredth part of a franc, or about one-fifth of a cent: the sou is five centimes, or about one cent.

During the reign of the Grand Monarque, the rural population of France wanted bread half of the time. Under the sway of Louis XV. it had bread two days out of three. Sufficient progress had been made under Louis XVI. to give it bread three-fourths of the year; while, under the Empire and the rule of the Citizen King, wages were sufficient to supply the labourer with bread through the year, and leave a surplus towards procuring other food and clothing. Doubtless, the labouring classes at the earliest period obtained food enough, such as it was, to support animal life, and made shift to get some clothing also. But their bread was made of the inferior grains, chestnuts, and even worse materials. De Jonnès quotes the Marquis d'Argenson, one of the ministers of Louis XV., as saying, in 1739; "At the moment when I write, in the month of February, in the midst of peace, with appearances promising a harvest, if not abundant at least passable, men die around us like flies, and are reduced by poverty to eat grass." He ascribes their condition to excessive taxation, declaring that the kingdom was treated like an enemy's country, laid under military contribution. The Duke of Orleans, to bring the condition of his people to the knowledge of the sovereign, finally carried a loaf of fern bread to the meeting of the King's Council, and at the opening of the session laid it before his Majesty, saying, "See, Sire, what your subjects live upon." This may be regarded as an exceptional case; but a very small portion even of well-read men at the present day, have any adequate impression of the wretchedness of the food, upon which the mass of the people of Europe fed a century and a half ago, and which even now makes the subsistence of a large portion of them.* De

* According to a Report of the Central Agricultural Congress, at Paris, published in the Journal des Debats, 30th March, 1847, it appears that in 1760, only 7,000,000 of the French people lived on wheat and corn; while,