"When wheat was at £4 per quarter, suppose the laborer's wages to be £24 per annum, or the value of six quarters of wheat, and suppose half his wages to be expended on wheat, and the other half (or £ 12) on other things, he would receive He would receive these wages to enable him to live When wheat was at £4, 10s., three quarters of wheat would cost And other things, When at £4 16s., three quarters of wheat would £12 00 12 00 £ 24 0 0 £ 13 10 0 12 0 0 £ 25 10 0 "In proportion as corn became dear, he” (the laborer) “would receive less corn wages, but his money would always increase; whilst his enjoyments, on the above supposition, would be precisely the same. But, as other commodities would be raised in price, in proportion as raw produce entered into their composition, he would have more to pay for some of them. Although his tea, sugar, soap, candles, and house-rent would probably be no dearer, he would pay more for his bacon, cheese, butter, linen, shoes, and cloth; and therefore, even with the above increase of wages, his situation would be comparatively worse." When wheat was at The principle of advance is this: 80s. per quarter, the laborer had received £24; when wheat rose to 90s., it might seem that he should receive £27; because 80:90:: £24: £27. But, in fact, he receives only one half of the difference, viz. 30s. His wages are now £25, 10s. Why is this? Because only one half of his original wages had been spent on wheat. But the full development of this principle I refer to the chapter on Rent, that I may not be obliged to repeat myself. CHAPTER IV. SECTION I.-RENT. THE particular situation of this chapter in Ricardo, placed immediately after the chapter on Value, is not without significance. By placing the consideration of Rent where he does place it, he is to be understood as viewing Rent under the idea of a disturbance to Value. Under that fiction, or at least under that relation, selected from other relations equally conspicuous, he brings up the question before his own bar. For the ordinary and continual disturbances of value, growing out of the varying proportions between fixed and circulating capital, Ricardo had allowed, in a striking part of his opening chapter. He had shown conclusively, that the universal principle of varying quantity in the producing labor as the cause of varying price, is subject to two modifications; as, first, that the price will be greater in the case where circulating capital predominates, than in the opposite case where fixed capital predominates; secondly, that the tendency will be in the same direction, according to the degrees in which the fixed 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 33 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 |