can pay no rent, it will be cultivated: for there is nothing to prevent the farmer from cultivating as much of his land as he pleases, or from cultivating it as elaborately as he pleases; and he will naturally cultivate it just so far and no further, than it yields him the ordinary rate of profit. After he has once taken a lease of his farm, he may indeed be willing to lay out capital upon it for less than the ordinary profit; but before he takes it, he will naturally expect, like all other capitalists, to obtain the ordinary rate of profit on the whole of his capital.

In a country such as England therefore, where almost all the land is cultivated by capitalist farmers, it may be laid down as a general rule, that the worst land under cultivation at any given time, is that which just yields the ordinary profits of capital: and that this land pays no rent. Cultivation descends to, and takes in, this land, for the price of corn renders it remunerative to do so: but it cannot descend lower, until either the price of corn rises from an increase of population, or until the progress of agricultural improvement enables corn to be raised at the same price from inferior lands. This land then is the standard which determines the amount of rent. Rent consists in the excess of produce yielded by all lands of a better quality than the worst under cultivation: and the competition among farmers enables the landlords to appropriate to themselves this excess. -The lower cultivation descends, the wider grows the difference between the best and worst land, and the larger does the excess of produce which constitutes rent, become.

It is evident therefore that rent rises in proportion as cultivation descends. Cultivation is enabled to descend by two causes: either by a rise in the price of food, or by agricultural improvements. Food rises in price whenever the advance of population increases the demand relatively to the supply: and this rise of price makes it profitable to cultivate an inferior quality of land. Agricultural improvements tend to benefit the laborers in the first place, by increasing the productiveness of labor: and thus their first and abstract tendency, as Mr. Ricardo and Mr. Mill have shown, is to diminish rent, by enabling society to dispense with some of the worst kinds of cultivated land. However, in the usual course of things, these improvements, instead of diminishing rent, have the effect of greatly augmenting it, as they enable inferior lands to be taken in, and thus make room for a further increase of population. Hitherto their ordinary action has been, not to cheapen food, but merely to prevent its growing dearer: not to benefit either the laborer or capitalist, but only to permit a further increase of population and capital. "Agricultural improvement then," says Mr. Mill, "is always ultimately, and in the manner in which it generally takes place, also immediately beneficial to the landlord. We may add that when it takes place in that manner, it is beneficial to no one else. When the demand for produce fully keeps pace with the increased capacity of production, food is not cheapened: the laborers are not, even temporarily, benefited: the cost of labor is not diminished, nor profits raised. There

is a greater aggregate production, a greater produce divided among the laborers, and a larger gross profit: but the wages being shared among a larger population, and the profits spread over a larger capital, no laborer is better off, nor does any capitalist derive from the same amount of capital a larger income."

Rent is the effect of what is called "a natural monopoly:" that is. it necessarily arises from inherent differences in the productive powers of the soil, and, as such, cannot be prevented from existing. The better qualities of land are like machines of superior power, and the excess of produce which they yield, must accrue to some one. The only question is, whether private individuals or society at large should profit by it? Hitherto every increase of rent has gone to the landlord class: but in so far as this increase has been due to the progress of population, and not to individual exertions on the part of the proprietors, the latter have done nothing to deserve it. "They grow richer," says Mr. Mill, "as it were in their sleep, without working, risking, or economizing." It would therefore be no violation of the great principle on which private property is based, namely the right of producers to what they have produced, if the state were to appropriate this spontaneous increase of rent: and Mr. Mill proposes that it should in future do so by a land-tax; from which the present value of al land should be exempt, and which should be levied with due precaution, so as not to affect any rise in rent which may be owing to individual skill and expenditure on the part of the proprietor.

Mr. Porter, in his Progress of the Nation, makes the following statements, showing the vast extent of uncultivated land which has been brought under cultivation in this country within the last century, and the consequent increase of rent. "The whole number of acres brought into cultivation," says Mr. Porter, "from the beginning of the reign of George the Third (1760) to the end of the year 1844, has been 7,076,610." This statement moreover, as far as I understand it, refers only to the common lands, which have been enclosed by acts of parliament. "With scarcely any exception," he says again, "the revenue drawn in the form of rent from the ownership of the soil, has been at least doubled in every part of Great Britain since 1790. This is not a random assertion, but, as regards many counties of England, can be proved by the testimony of living witnesses, while in Scotland the fact is notorious to the whole population." "The increased rental of real property in England and Wales during the thirty-five years that we have now been at peace in Europe, exceeds forty millions." From the foregoing description of the laws of wages, profits, and rent, it may be seen that a good test of the actual state of the distribution of wealth in any given country, is afforded by the productiveness of the land which forms the extreme margin of cultivation. "It is well said by Dr. Chalmers," says Mr. Mill, that many of the most important lessons in political economy are to be learned at the extreme margin of cultivation, the last point which the culture of the soil has reached in its contest with the spontaneous agencies of nature. The degree of the productiveness of this extreme margin, is an index

to the existing state of the distribution of the produce among the three classes of laborers, capitalists, and landlords." When the marginal soil is unproductive, as is at present the case in this country, it is a certain sign that both wages and profits are low and that rent is high. It shows, in the first place, that population is pressing too heavily on the soil and the capital, and therefore that real wages (that is, the necessaries and comforts obtained by the laborers) are low. Secondly, it shows, that money wages are comparatively high; for money wages have a close connection with the price of food, and the latter, as will be shown presently, must be high when the worst land is unproductive. If the standard of comfort among the laborers (which alone decides their real wages) do not vary, and they receive the same amount of commodities, it is obvious that their money wages must depend on the price of these commodities. Hence money wages will, generally speaking, be high in proportion to the price of food: a truth which is illustrated by the gradual rise in money wages, as well as in the price of food, which has taken place in the progress of society. Now whenever money wages rise, profits fall; for profits, as we have seen, vary inversely with money wages or the cost of labor. Therefore, whenever the worst land under cultivation is of a low quality, it is a sure sign that profits, as well as real wages, are low. It is a sign also, in the third place, that rent is high; for rent depends on the excess of produce yielded by all lands of a better quality than the worst land under cultivation, and rises in proportion as cultivation descends to lands of an inferior quality. Labor therefore cannot possibly be dear, nor food cheap, unless the margin of cultivation consist of a very productive soil; and all schemes for benefiting the working classes which do not keep this truth in view, are necessarily fallacious. From the above considerations may be seen also the truth of the following proposition, to which I would particularly call attention, as it seems to me the most fundamental as well as the least generally understood of all the subjects relating to wages; namely, that low wages are essentially a question of production and not of distribution, that they arise from a low productiveness of labour and not from an unjust distribution of wealth. This is a point on which very erroneous views are usually entertained. It is evident that there are two ways in which low wages may be accounted for; it may be held either that the labourers do not produce enough to maintain them in comfort; or that, although they produce enough, a large part of the produce is wrested from them by the exactions of landlords and employers. The latter opinion is exceedingly common, but it seems to me a radical and a most dangerous error. If we look closely into the matter, we shall find that the grand cause of low wages and long hours of work in this and other old countries, is not the mal-distribution of wealth, but the low productiveness of labour; in other words, the labourers receive little, not because a large part of the produce is taken from them, but mainly because they do not, under present circumstances, produce enough to support themselves in comfort even by working ten or twelve hours a day. The low productiveness of labour, again, arises from the fact that

population is pressing too heavily on the land; that the excessive numbers of the people keep cultivation constantly depressed to poor soils, which yield but a scanty return even to the most skilful and longcontinued efforts of industry. Poverty and overwork are the effects of a low productiveness of labour, arising from the undue pressure of population on the productive powers of the soil. To convince ourselves that the productiveness of labour is in reality very low in this country, we have but to consider attentively the great fact that the general rate both of wages and of profits is very low. Indeed, the remuneration of labour and capital is only about half what it is in the United States. Thus, M. Joseph Garnier, in his work on Political Economy, remarks that "in the present day, the average rate of wages in the United States is the double of that in Europe.' Mr. Mill says also, that "the rate of profit is higher; as indicated by the rate of interest, which is six per cent. at New York, when it is three or three and a quarter per cent. in London." Now when the general rate both of wages and of profits is low in a country, it is a certain sign that the productiveness of labour is low. This will be clearly seen, if we attend to the mode in which the produce of industry is distributed. As already mentioned, the whole produce or wealth of the country is divided between the three classes who own the requisites of production, namely, the productive labourers, the capitalists, and the landlords. In manufactures and commerce, the whole of the produce (with the exception of the sum paid for the groundrent of buildings) is divided between the labourers and the capitalists alone; and in agriculture also, these two classes divide between them the whole produce of the inferior soils-or, to speak more exactly, the whole of the returns to that part of the farmer's capital which yields no more than the ordinary rate of profit; while the excess of profit or of produce yielded by the better soils goes in the shape of rent to the landlords. If therefore, the general rate of wages and profits is low in England, it can only be, because the wealth produced by the workmen in manufactures and commerce, and on the inferior soils, is insufficient either in quantity or exchange value to give an adequate remuneration to labour and capital. The labour engaged in trade and manufactures is, no doubt, very efficient, if we look only to the quantity of the commodities produced by the workmen, and this is what blinds people to the real deficiency of productive power in the country; but we must remember that the price of manufactured articles is low, so that a man is unable, even by a long day's work, to produce enough of them to earn for himself and family a comfortable subsistence. On the other hand, the high price of food, the first necessary of life, shows in the clearest manner the low fertility of the inferior soils, and the real cause which depresses the general productiveness of labour; for the price of food (as will be shown presently) depends on its cost of production on the worst soils under cultivation, and therefore, whenever food is habitually dear, it is a sure sign that cultivation has been driven down to land of a poor quality, which yields but a scanty produce in proportion to the labour and capital expended on it. The only case in which labour is highly productive, both as regards the quantity and value of

the articles produced, is that of the industry employed on the better soils; but this case is quite an exception to the general rule, and has no effect on wages and profits, since the whole excess of produce goes as rent to the landlords. These considerations seem to me sufficient to show that the fundamental cause of poverty and overwork in England does not lie in the distribution of wealth (however shamefully unjust this undoubtedly is), but in the low productiveness of labour, and that to remove the evil, what is above all needed, is a careful restraint on population so as to take off the pressure on the productive powers of the soil.

It may be seen too, from the above remarks, that the chief condition on which the well-being of a people depends, is not the distribution of wealth, however important that may be, but the productiveness of labour. Though comparatively little attended to in popular discussions, this seems to me by far the most important of all economical questions. It is the productiveness of labour which really and at bottom determines the rate of wages and profits and the hours of work in a country; where wages are high, as in America or Australia, it is because the productiveness of labour is high, and where they are low, as in England or France, it is because the productive powers are deficient. As Mr. Mill observes, in speaking of the law of diminishing productiveness in the soil, the question "involves the whole subject of the causes of poverty in a rich and industrious community." It is this law, called into play by the constant advance of population, which has counteracted the effects of the progress made in machinery and industrial skill, and which has lowered the productiveness of labour, and with it the rate of wages and profits, in all the civilised countries of the old world.

EXCHANGE.

We may next proceed to consider the laws of the Exchange of wealth, or in other words, the laws of Value and of Price. In a society like our own, exchanges are of such constant occurrence, that without a knowledge of the laws which govern them, it is impossible to have any clear or correct idea of the nature of economical transactions.

"In a state of society," says Mr. Mill, “in which the industrial system is entirely founded on purchase and sale, each individual, for the most part, living not on things in the production of which he himself bears a part, but on things obtained by a double exchange, a sale followed by a purchase-the question of Value is fundamental. Almost every speculation respecting the economical interests of a society thus constituted implies some theory of Value; the smallest error on that subject infects with corresponding error all our other conclusions; and anything vague or misty in our conception of it creates confusion and uncertainty in everything else. Happily there is nothing in the laws of Value which remains for the present or any future writer to clear up: the theory of the subject is complete."