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

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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.

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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

tion be "rent?" "No," says Ricardo himself, "it would not; but, popularly, it would be called rent. And then he goes on to show that the true rent, which probably would be the same in each case, is that part of the total "remuneration" which is "paid for the original and indestructible powers of the soil;" whilst that part of the remuneration which is strictly pseudo-rent, must be viewed as "paid for the use of the capital" sunk in the improvements. Is that not sound? Certainly it is; quite sound: and, by the way, it is the more noticeable in Ricardo, because it has been accidentally his ordinary oversight to talk of rent as if this were the one great burden on the farmer of land: whereas so much greater is the burden in this island from the capital required, that Mr. Jacob 35 (well known in past times to the British government as an excellent authority) reports the proportion of capital to rent, needed in ordinary circumstances, as being then little less than four to one. From fifty-two reports made to a Committee of the Lords in the year before Waterloo, the result was, that upon one hundred acres, paying in rent no more than £161: 12: 7, the total of other expenses (that is, of the capital fixed and circulating) was £601 15:1 per annum. And in some other cases, as, for instance, in bringing into tillage the waste lands known technically as "cold clays," the proportion of capital required for some years appeared to be much greater, on an average, three times greater; so that the capital would be ten or eleven times as much as the rent; and, in such circumstances, the total sacrifice of rent by the landlord would be no serious relief to the improving tenant. Such being the true relation of agricultural capital to rent, which generally Ricardo seems to overlook, it would be strange indeed to blame him for this particular passage, in which he does not overlook it. The distinction is just and necessary. The payment for the

house, barns, stables, fences, drains, &c., is rightly distinguished from the rent; it is interest paid upon capital invested in the farm, and therefore, in fact, lent to the farmer. As reasonably might you call the interest upon twenty thousand pounds, which the farmer had brought into his business, either as a loan from the neighboring bank or as his own patrimonial inheritance, part of his rent. But still the rent (speaking with that strictness which must always be a duty where we are speaking polemically) is to be calculated from the rating, from the place occupied on the differential scale, howsoever that place has been reached. Now, at this moment, much land is thus or thus rich, in consequence of this or that sum of capital co-operative with its original powers. You are not careful to distinguish between the original power and the acquired power; any more than, with regard to a man of talents, you care to say, "So much is due to nature, so much to education and personal efforts." Often you cannot distinguish. The farmer, indeed, as a private secret, may guess that so much of his nominal rent arises upon the improvements, so much upon the original powers of the land. But the true rent is calculated severely upon these differential powers, however obtained, as found by comparing it with other lands cultivated on the prospect of the same markets; and the only ground for separating the nominal rent into true rent and pseudo-rent, is because some improvements do not directly increase the differential powers of a particular estate, but only increase the convenience, the respectability in appearance, the variable divisibility of the estate; or, potentially, they raise a basis upon which, as yet, no additional power perhaps has been raised, but on. which the tenant (being a man of energy) can raise such a power much sooner than otherwise he could. For instance, an excellent road has been made to lime or marl,

or new pits of those manures have been opened. Now, it is for the tenant to use those advantages. If he does not use them, to him they are as if they did not exist; but, if he does, then he finds a saving of possibly fifty per cent upon all that he fetches, which may be seven or ten per cent on his total costs. So, again, as to better divisions of lands, by which they may be applied to a larger cycle of uses; or, where the divisions have previously existed, heretofore they may have been rude and fixed. Now, by means of light iron hurdles, they may be much more effectual, and yet susceptible of variable arrangement, according to the wants of the particular season. Or, again, the house upon the estate, the approach to it, and the outhouses universally, may have been improved. Where, indeed, the improvement has tended to the direct conservation of the produce, as by leaded tanks of shallow capacity for receiving cream, or by granaries fenced against vermin, or by reservoirs prepared for receiving manure without waste, they are equivalent to direct augmentations in the soil of natural power.

The logical incidence of the last paragraph, though plain in its parts, may seem obscure in the whole; and I add this explanation. There is a large distinction into two cases to be made for agricultural improvements. And this was not overlooked by Ricardo. The difference is, that one class actually augments the power of your land: it did produce ten, - it does produce twelve. But the other class leaves the power where it was; having produced ten formerly, it produces ten now. How, then, is it an improvement? In this way, that, whereas formerly this ten required a cost of five guineas, now it requires only a cost of three. I do not at all overlook that oftentimes this saving is but an inverse form of announcing an increased power, since the two guineas saved may be used in further corresponding