interest for the stock laid out by the landlord
upon its improvement. This, no doubt, may
be partly the case upon some occasions; for it
can scarce ever be more than partly the case.
The landlord demands a rent even for unimproved
land, and the supposed interest or profit
upon the expense of improvement is generally
an addition to this original rent. Those
improvements, besides, are not always made
by the stock of the landlord, but sometimes
by that of the tenant. When the lease comes
to be renewed, however, the landlord commonly
demands the same augmentation of rent
as if they had been all made by his own.
He sometimes demands rent for what is
altogether incapable of human improvements.
Kelp is a species of sea-weed, which, when
burnt, yields an alkaline salt, useful for making
glass, soup, and for several other purposes.
It grows in several parts of Great Britain,
particularly in Scotland, upon such rocks only
as lie within the high-water mark, which are
twice every day covered with the sea, and of
which the produce, therefore, was never
augmented by human industry. The landlord,
however, whose estate is bounded by a kelp
shore of this kind, demands a rent for it as
much as for his corn-fields.
The sea in the neighbourhood of the islands
of Shetland is more than commonly abundant
in fish, which makes a great part of the
subsistence of their inhabitants. But, in order
to profit by the produce of the water, they
must have a habitation upon the neighbouring
land. The rent of the landlord is in proportion,
not to what the farmer can make by the
land, but to what he can make both by the
land and the water. It is partly paid in sea-fish;
and one of the very few instances in
which rent makes a part of the price of that
commodity, is to be found in that country.
The rent of land, therefore, considered as
the price paid for the use of the land, is naturally
a monopoly price. It is not at all proportioned
to what the landlord may have laid
out upon the improvement of the land, or to
what he can afford to take, but to what the
farmer can afford to give.
Such parts only of the produce of land can
commonly be brought to market, of which the
ordinary price is sufficient to replace the stock
which must be employed in bringing them
thither, together with its ordinary profits. If
the ordinary price is more than this, the surplus
part of it will naturally go to the rent of
the land. If it is not more, though the commodity
may be brought to market, it can afford
no rent to the landlord. Whether the
price is, or is not more, depends upon the demand.
There are some parts of the produce of land,
for which the demand must always be such as
to afford a greater price than what is sufficient
to bring them to market, and there are
others for which it either may or may not be
such as to afford this greater price. The
former must always afford a rent to the landlord.
The latter sometimes may and sometimes may
not, according to different circumstances.
Rent, it is to be observed, therefore, enters
into the composition of the price of commodities
in a different way from wages and profit.
High or low wages and profit are the
causes of high or low price; high or low rent
is the effect of it. It is because high or low
wages and profit must be paid, in order to
bring a particular commodity to market, that
its price is high or low. But it is because its
price is high or low, a great deal more, or
very little more, or no more, than what is sufficient
to pay those wages and profit, that it
affords a high rent, or a low rent, or no rent
at all.
The particular consideration, first, of those
parts of the produce of land which always afford
some rent; secondly, of those which sometimes
may and sometimes may not afford rent;
and, thirdly, of the variations which, in the
different periods of improvement, naturally
take place in the relative value of those two
different sorts of rude produce, when compared
both with one another and with manufactured
commodities, will divide this chapter
into three parts.
Part I.—Of the Produce of Land which
always affords Rent.
As men, like all other animals, naturally multiply
in proportion to the means of their subsistence,
food is always more or less in demand.
It can always purchase or command
a greater or smaller quantity of labour, and
somebody can always be found who is willing to
do something in order to obtain it. The
quantity of labour, indeed, which it can purchase,
is not always equal to what it could
maintain, if managed in the most economical
manner, on account of the high wages which
are sometimes given to labour; but it can always
purchase such a quantity of labour as it
can maintain, according to the rate at which
that sort of labour is commonly maintained in
the neighbourhood.
But land, in almost any situation, produces
a greater quantity of food than what is sufficient
to maintain all the labour necessary for
bringing it to market, in the most liberal way
in which that labour is ever maintained. The
surplus, too, is always more than sufficient to
replace the stock which employed that labour,
together with its profit. Something, therefore,
always remains for a rent to the landlord.
The most desert moors in Norway and Scotland
produce some sort of pasture for cattle,
of which the milk and the increase are always
more than sufficient, not only to maintain all
the labour necessary for tending them, and to