the superabundance of wine. By act of assembly,
they have restrained its cultivation to
six thousand plants, supposed to yield a thousand
weight of tobacco, for every negro between
sixteen and sixty years of age. Such
a negro, over and above this quantity of tobacco,
can manage, they reckon, four acres of
Indian corn. To prevent the market from
being overstocked, too, they have sometimes,
in plentiful years, we are told by Dr Douglas[15]
(I suspect he has been ill informed),
burnt a certain quantity of tobacco for every
negro, in the same manner as the Dutch are
said to do of spices. If such violent methods
are necessary to keep up the present price of
tobacco, the superior advantage of its culture
over that of corn, if it still has any, will not
probably be of long continuance.
It is in this manner that the rent of the cultivated
land, of which the produce is human
food, regulates the rent of the greater part of
other cultivated land. No particular produce
can long afford less, because the land would
immediately be turned to another use; and if
any particular produce commonly affords more,
it is because the quantity of land which can
be fitted for it is too small to supply the effectual
demand.
In Europe, corn is the principal produce of
land, which serves immediately for human
food. Except in particular situations, therefore,
the rent of corn land regulates in Europe
that of all other cultivated land. Britain need
envy neither the vineyards of France, nor the
olive plantations of Italy. Except in particular
situations, the value of these is regulated
by that of corn, in which the fertility of Britain
is not much inferior to that of either of
those two countries.
If, in any country, the common and favourite
vegetable food of the people should be
drawn from a plant, of which the most common
land, with the same, or nearly the same
culture, produced a much greater quantity
than the most fertile does of corn; the rent of
the landlord, or the surplus quantity of food
which would remain to him, after paying the
labour, and replacing the stock of the farmer,
together with its ordinary profits, would necessarily
be much greater. Whatever was the
rate at which labour was commonly maintained
in that country, this greater surplus could
always maintain a greater quantity of it, and,
consequently, enable the landlord to purchase
or command a greater quantity of it. The
real value of his rent, his real power and authority,
his command of the necessaries and
conveniencies of life with which the labour of
other people could supply him, would necessarily
be much greater.
A rice field produces a much greater quantity
of food than the most fertile corn field.
Two crops in the year, from thirty to sixty
bushels each, are said to be the ordinary produce
of an acre. Though its cultivation,
therefore, requires more labour, a much greater
surplus remains after maintaining all that
labour. In those rice countries, therefore,
where rice is the common and favourite vegetable
food of the people, and where the cultivators
are chiefly maintained with it, a greater
share of this greater surplus should belong to
the landlord than in corn countries. In Carolina,
where the planters, as in other British
colonies, are generally both farmers and landlords,
and where rent, consequently, is confounded
with profit, the cultivation of rice is
found to be more profitable than that of corn,
though their fields produce only one crop in
the year, and though, from the prevalence of
the customs of Europe, rice is not there the
common and favourite vegetable food of the
people.
A good rice field is a bog at all seasons,
and at one season a bog covered with water.
It is unfit either for corn, or pasture, or vineyard,
or, indeed, for any other vegetable produce
that is very useful to men; and the lands
which are fit for those purposes are not fit for
rice. Even in the rice countries, therefore,
the rent of rice lands cannot regulate the rent
of the other cultivated land which can never
be turned to that produce.
The food produced by a field of potatoes is
not inferior in quantity to that produced by a
field of rice, and much superior to what is
produced by a field of wheat. Twelve thousand
weight of potatoes from an acre of land
is not a greater produce than two thousand
weight of wheat. The food or solid nourishment,
indeed, which can be drawn from each
of those two plants, is not altogether in proportion
to their weight, on account of the watery
nature of potatoes. Allowing, however,
half the weight of this root to go to water, a
very large allowance, such an acre of potatoes
will still produce six thousand weight of solid
nourishment, three times the quantity produced
by the acre of wheat. An acre of potatoes
is cultivated with less expense than an
acre of wheat; the fallow, which generally
precedes the sowing of wheat, more than compensating
the hoeing and other extraordinary
culture which is always given to potatoes.
Should this root ever become in any part of
Europe, like rice in some rice countries, the
common and favourite vegetable food of the
people, so as to occupy the same proportion
of the lands in tillage, which wheat and other
sorts of grain for human food do at present,
the same quantity of cultivated land would
maintain a much greater number of people;
and the labourers being generally fed with potatoes,
a greater surplus would remain after
replacing all the stock, and maintaining all
the labour employed in cultivation. A greater
share of this surplus, too, would belong to the
landlord. Population would increase, and