duce above the cost of production, is three times that of the former but it requires nearly seven times the amount of advances of capital.' The capitalists who obtain for rent and profits four-sevenths of the value of the crop, have but one-third the amount received by those whose proportion is but three-eighths. The remaining five-eighths, which the latter expend in the wages of labourers and the improvement of the soil, is five times as much in amount, as is furnished for those objects in the poorer Departments. Decreasing proportion for the capitalists, with increasing quantity, is thus exhibited, as well by the comparison between different districts of the same country, as by that of the country at large, in different stages of its progress. The converse of the proposition must clearly hold in respect to the wages of labour; and, after better wages have been provided for the existing labourers, there is still three times the amount to be added to the capital of the advanced Departments, and to furnish wages for new labourers in the advanced Departments, that the more backward could supply. Instead of population encroaching upon the limits of subsistence, those limits recede before the advance of population.

We might multiply proofs of the same character, and extend the comparison over wider periods. The only difficulty is, that as we recede in time, the information which we are able to obtain becomes indefinite in character, and can seldom be exhibited with the precision of figures in a tabular form. It sometimes occurs that the rent of ancient times is given by the proportion to the whole produce. Thus Cato,† in his agricultural treatise, has informed us that in his day the lands of Italy, not cultivated by the owner himself, nor by his superintendent, usually a freedman or slave, were farmed out to what was styled a Politor, who retained for his personal services and those of his family, from one-ninth to one-fifth of the crop. The proprietor in this case furnished everything—the slaves, beasts, seed, and tools. Where lands in Italy are now let upon the Metairie system, or on shares, the Metayer usually has half of the crops, furnishing half of the live stock and seed; the highest pro

* Article Agriculture, Dictionnaire de l'Economie Politique, vol. 1, p. 38. † Chap. 136, 137, quoted by Dureau de La Malle, Economie Politique des Romains, vol. 2, page 60.

portion known is upon some of the volcanic lands of the Kingdom of Naples, where the landlord takes two-thirds.

But the great conclusive fact is, that in those countries which have attained to civilization and wealth, history shows us that at the early periods, while they were yet poor and barbarous, the actual cultivators of the land were in a condition of slavery, incapable of acquiring any property, and obtaining a bare subsistence, like the oxen that worked with them. If we look at contemporary nations, in different stages of social progress and wealth, we see the lowest in the scale are marked by the slavery of the actual tillers of the soil. The Serfs in Russia, the Fellahs in Egypt, the Peons in Mexico, the slaves of our Southern States, are ready examples. We shall necessarily recur to this point when treating of Wages.

But it is needless to multiply evidences. A single case, fairly put and fully authenticated, is decisive; for the laws of Nature admit of no exceptions, and operate equally at all times and in all places.

We have now examined all that is distinctive and consistent in Mr. Ricardo's theory of Rent, and shown that it will not bear the test either of speculative reasoning or historical experience. He has almost casually referred to "advantages of situation" as equivalent to natural fertility, in determining value and rent. By advantages of situation is meant either actual proximity to markets for its produce, or that virtual proximity which is occasioned by rapid and cheap modes of transportation. In whichever way produced, the advantage is the result of the expenditure of capital in building up towns near the farm, or in constructing roads, canals, railways, and the machines for running upon them, which, for all economical purposes, annihilate distance in the same proportion as they annihilate the cost of overcoming it. Advantages which are the product of capital must necessarily be governed, as to the value of their ownership and use, by the same laws which regulate the value of other products of capital. The cost of obtaining them diminishes with the growth of population, and that growth at the same time diminishes the necessity for them; as the number of inhabitants in a district cannot be increased without bringing them nearer to each other, and thus facilitating their exchanges. Such advantages,

moreover, are not among "the original and indestructible powers of the soil," and anything paid for their use, is excluded from the denomination of Rent by Mr. Ricardo's definition.

"Though land is not the produce of industry," says Mr. J. S. Mill, "most of its valuable properties are so. Labour is not only requisite for using, but almost equally so for fashioning the instrument." Mr. Mill probably means by valuable, simply useful. In the signification we have attached to value, it would be a mere truism to say that all valuable properties of land, or any other object, are the produce of labour. He is entirely correct in calling land an instrument. It is a great machine, differing from others in the circumstance that it is immovable. But, like other machines, whatsoever of its force is due to the past operation of natural agents, having been gratuitously produced, must be gratuitously parted with, in exchange, and gratuitously lent. Such is that accumulation of organic and inorganic matter, which constitutes its fertility, and gives it what Mr. Ricardo calls its original and indestructible powers.

We have shown that, so far from there being in land any residuum of value attributable to such powers, it is, like other capital, always exchanging for less labour than has been expended in giving it value; and that all other consequences which attend this fact, are found in connection with the use of land, and the partition of its products. Henceforth we shall disregard the notion of a distinction between capital incorporated in land, and movable capital in any other shape, as to their essential laws.

CHAPTER V.

WAGES.

THE laws which govern the partition, between those who lend the capital and those who lend the muscular force, of the products which result from their combination, have been deduced in the preceding chapters. The subject, however, is so important as to justify its treatment as a separate head, and in other relations than that of proportion.

s;

Labour is what every one has to sell. They who desire to buy it, naturally seek to obtain it at the lowest absolute price; and it is habitually called cheap or dear, by reference to the quantity of coin which is exchanged for a given number of hours of exertion. On the other hand, the man who offers it for sale compares the quantity of exertion which he intends, or is expected to give to his task, with the quantity of necessaries and comforts he is to obtain for it-things often very different in kind from those upon which his labour is to be expended. The proportion which Wages bear to Profit being practically adjusted before the latter are ascertained, it is the present and definite quantum, not the future and undetermined ratio, to which men's minds are mainly directed in the operations of business and this fact has given the same direction, for the most part, to the inquiries of Economists. Mr. Ricardo, indeed, and some of his followers, treat wages as high or low, in reference to the proportion they bear to the entire produce. It is in this sense that he declares "There is no other way of keeping profits up but by keeping wages down;" and that Mr. M'Culloch says, "That profits vary inversely as wages—that is, they fall when wages rise, and rise when wages fall." The latter gentleman testified before a Committee of Parliament, that “The whole and only effect of a French manufacturer getting his labour for less than an English manufacturer, is to enable him to make more profit than the English manufacturer can, but not to lower the price of his goods;" and that the circumstance "would have no effect whatever on the price of the commodities

produced in either country." We believe this to have been less than the truth, in the sense which Mr. M'Culloch intended to attach to the words "high wages;" for high proportional wages are the index of cheap production. The Committee, however, understood him to mean by high wages, a large amount; and, although in this sense his testimony was paradoxical, they appear to have felt so much deference for his authority and that of Ricardo, as to have wavered in their own convictions. Mr. Ricardo has not always himself succeeded in his writings, in using the words as indicative of proportion and not of quantity. There is no doubt that his authority has been supposed to be on the side of the common error, that high wages, in the ordinary sense that is to say, a liberal amount, estimated in money or in the necessaries of life- are incompatible with high profits, and that whatever is taken from one is added to the other. There is as little doubt that this opinion has had a pernicious influence upon the policy of England. Mr. Huskisson, in his speech of April 28, 1825, on the revision of the Corn Laws, told the House of Commons, "If capital had not a fair remuneration here, it would seek for it in America. To give it a fair remuneration, the price of labour must be kept down." There is no ambiguity here. When, in 1846, the views of Mr. Huskisson prevailed, and the Corn Laws were repealed, it was that the price of labour might be kept down. It is believed by many that their repeal was advantageous to the United States, because it enabled us to exchange our grain in the English markets for cloths and iron wrought by low-priced labour, instead of exchanging them for cloths and iron made from our native materials, and wrought by high-priced labour at home. Which is true economy, depends in part upon the question, how far low-priced labour and cheap labour are the same thing.

We mean by labour, the exertion of human powers, physical and mental; by wages, the quantity of food, clothing, and other necessaries and conveniences, actually obtained in exchange for such exertion. They are usually obtained in the first instance in the shape of money, or whatever answers as the current representative of value, which the labourer exchanges for so much as he can of material commodities, or social services, contributing to his enjoy.