capital has less and less of durability; for the plain reason, that so far the fixed capital approximates in virtue to the separate nature of circulating capital. These are settled reagencies of co-causes, which sometimes arise jointly with the great general cause of price, sometimes arise singly, and sometimes not at all. They must not be called anomalies or irregularities, any more than the resistance of the air is an irregularity or exception to the law governing the motion of projectiles. It is convenient to abstract from this resistance in the first steps of the exposition. But afterwards, when you allow for it, this allowance is not to be considered in the light of any concession, as if originally you had gone too far, and now wished to unmask the whole truth by instalments. Not at all. The original force, as you had laid it down from the first, continues to be the true force: it exerts its whole agency, and not a part or fraction of its agency, even under the co-presence of the opposing and limiting cause. If, being left to itself, it ought to have reached an effect of 50, but, under this limiting force, it has fallen to 35, then the true logic is not to say that it has yielded to an exception, or suffered an irregularity on the contrary, all is regular. Since, if at first sight, it seems simply to have lost 15, (which, pro tanto, seems an irregularity,) on severer examination it appears to have expended that 15 on neutralizing a counter-agency; so that the total force exerted has been equally 50 according to the theory, and according to the true concrete case of experience.

Now, then, is rent a disturbance of value simply in the sense of being a modification, (as here explained,) or does it suspend and defeat that law? Ricardo has not pushed the question to that formal issue; but generally, he has endeavored to bring the question of rent into immediate relation with value, by putting the ques

tion upon it in this shape, "Whether the appropriation of land, and the consequent creation of rent, will occasion any variation in the relative value of commodities, independently of the quantity of labor necessary to production?" Whether, in short, the proportions between the two labors producing A and B will continue, in spite of rent, to determine the prices of A and B ; or whether this law will be limited by the law of rent; or whether, in any case, this law will be actually set aside by rent? Upon Adam Smith's principles, rent introduced a new element into price. Is that so? It is the question moved at present.

So important a question brings forward the obligation of investigating the new doctrine of rent as a duty even for Ricardo, who else could not have any particular interest in discussing a doctrine which had not been discovered by himself. The modern doctrine of rent was, in reality, one of those numerous discoveries which have been made many times over before they are made; that is, it had been ideally detected at different eras by some inquisitive and random intellect, prying where it had no business, several times before it was perceived to involve those weighty consequences which give dignity to the truth, by giving practical motives for remembering it. Ricardo had been acquainted with this truth for nearly two years when he wrote his own book. It is not improbable that, previously to this knowledge, he had tentatively sketched his theory of value; but he must have been impeded by the defect of such knowledge in carrying out this theory into a satisfactory harmony with the laws regulating wages and profits; for both these presuppose the law of rent. Without knowing rent and its principles, it is impossible to know the principles which control wages in the first place, and profits in the second.

Natural it is, when a man enters upon a new theme, that he should introduce it by a definition; and, as regards what logicians call the nominal definition, such a course is perfectly right. But as to the real definition, this is so far from taking precedency in the natural process of thought, that, on the contrary, it ought to be the last result 83 from the total discussion. However, without insisting upon this, what is the definition? says Ricardo," is that portion of the products of the earth which is paid to the landlord for the use of the original and indestructible powers of the soil."

"Rent,"

Can this definition be sustained? Certainly not. The word "indestructible" is liable to challenge; and, in order that the student may see why, first let me explain to him under what prepossession it was that Ricardo introduced that word. He was thinking of the casual and the intermitting when he suggested the indestructible. At pp. 50 and 51, he notices two cases one being the case of a Norway forest, and the other of a coal-mine or a stone-quarry - where Adam Smith had applied the popular term "rent" as strictly pertinent. But Ricardo thinks otherwise. In any one of these cases he views the payment for the mine or quarry, colloquially called "the rent," as no rent at all in any strict sense. Now, as against Adam Smith, in the quoad hominem sense, the censure of Ricardo is not applicable: he is but consistent; for he could not be bound to any strictness of distinction growing out of a doctrine which in his days was unknown. But understand Ricardo as speaking of Adam Smith, in an argument spoken to more modern writers, and still, even in that case, Ricardo is wrong. He contemplates the Norway forest, the coal-mine, the stone-quarry, as if all alike leased out to the tenant, not with any view to a continued succession of crops, but

as simply transferred on the consideration of that crop now ready for removal. He puts the question, in fact, precisely as he would do on the case of a man's leasing out his coal-cellar to another with the privilege of emptying it. Now, this is not the real case of a forest or a coal-mine. In the forest there is a regular process pursued with the purpose of creating a continual succession of "falls," so arranged that, by the fifteenth year, for instance, the section thinned in the first year may be ready again for thinnings, and so on perpetually, according to the nature of the wood. In a coal-mine, again, the known uncertainty of the veins as to direction and density of the different strata, gives a reasonable prospect of continuous succession in the annual yield. But suppose all this not to be so. Take the case as Ricardo apparently shapes it, viz. that you let off a coal-cellar with liberty to the lessee of emptying it within a year or two. Here the profitable product, the "crop," of the cellar is known beforehand to a hundred-weight, and you are not to suppose any concealment as to this fact, or any deception. Clearly, now, this coal cannot be described as any produce from "the original and indestructible powers" of, the cellar. And therefore, says Ricardo, the term "rent" could not be applied in any other than an improper sense to the consideration paid by the lessee of the cellar. But is that so? Not at all. In the modern (and most exclusive) sense of the term, "rent" might be paid by such a lessee. For take the cellar, or take the stone-quarry, and imagine the coal, the stone, or the stercoraceous deposit in the vast crypts cleaned out by Hercules, to have been accurately measured, it would be no impossible bargain that a day's produce from the labor of fifty men in any one of the chambers supposed, should be set off against a similar

product from known mines, quarries, crypts, in the same neighborhood, and should be charged with a rent corresponding to the assignable differences in the "put-out." A neighboring coal-mine, for instance, worked by a hundred colliers, would furnish a standard for the comparison. If our carbonaceous crypt, or our stercoraceous crypt, yielded a produce larger by twenty-five per cent upon the same quantity of labor, then we should have a good ground for rent in the severest sense, although the crypt were notoriously exhaustible in one, two, or three years.

It is not, therefore, the inherent or indestructible powers of a subject which will make it capable of rent, but the differential powers; and the true definition of rent is, in the strictest terms, that portion of the produce from the soil (or from any agency of production) which is paid to the landlord for the use of its differential powers, as measured by comparison with those of similar agencies operating on the same market. Though Aristotle should rise from the dead, that definition (I humbly submit) will stand.

66

Undoubtedly, there are found cases in England, and cases very numerous, where, at first sight, Ricardo's definition seems almost indispensable for reaching the true distinction between what is rent, and what is not. For instance, he himself supposes the case where "of two adjoining farms," otherwise exactly equal, (same size, same quality,) one had all the conveniences of farming buildings, was, besides, properly drained and manured, and advantageously divided by hedges, fences, and walls; while the other had none of these advantages." Now, surely Ricardo has the right to presume, that for the improved farm "more remuneration would naturally be paid” than for the unimproved. But would that excess of remunera