rents would rise much beyond what they are
at present.
The land which is fit for potatoes, is fit for
almost every other useful vegetable. If they
occupied the same proportion of cultivated
land which corn does at present, they would
regulate, in the same manner, the rent of the
greater part of other cultivated land.
In some parts of Lancashire, it is pretended,
I have been told, that bread of oatmeal is
a heartier food for labouring people than
wheaten bread, and I have frequently heard
the same doctrine held in Scotland. I am,
however, somewhat doubtful of the truth of
it. The common people in Scotland, who are
fed with oatmeal, are in general neither so
strong nor so handsome as the same rank of
people in England, who are fed with wheaten
bread. They neither work so well, nor look
so well; and as there is not the same difference
between the people of fashion in the two
countries, experience would seem to shew,
that the food of the common people in Scotland
is not so suitable to the human constitution
as that of their neighbours of the same
rank in England. But it seems to be otherwise
with potatoes. The chairmen, porters,
and coal-heavers in London, and those unfortunate
women who live by prostitution, the
strongest men and the most beautiful women
perhaps in the British dominions, are said to
be, the greater part of them, from the lowest
rank of people in Ireland, who are generally
fed with this root. No food can afford a more
decisive proof of its nourishing quality, or of
its being peculiarly suitable to the health of
the human constitution.
It is difficult to preserve potatoes through
the year, and impossible to store them like
corn, for two or three years together. The
fear of not being able to sell them before they
rot, discourages their cultivation, and is, perhaps,
the chief obstacle to their ever becoming
in any great country, like bread, the principal
vegetable food of all the different ranks of the
people.
Part II.—Of the Produce of Land, which
sometimes does, and sometimes does not, afford
Rent.
Human food seems to be the only produce of
land, which always and necessarily affords
some rent to the landlord. Other sorts of
produce sometimes may, and sometimes may
not, according to different circumstances.
After food, clothing and lodging are the
two great wants of mankind.
Land, in its original rude state, can afford
the materials of clothing and lodging to a
much greater number of people than it can
feed. In its improved state, it can sometimes
feed a greater number of people than it can
supply with those materials; at least in the
way in which they require them, and are willing
to pay for them. In the one state, therefore,
there is always a superabundance of those
materials, which are frequently, upon that account,
of little or no value. In the other,
there is often a scarcity, which necessarily
augments their value. In the one state, a
great part of them is thrown away as useless;
and the price of what is used is considered as
equal only to the labour and expense of fitting
it for use, and can, therefore, afford no
rent to the landlord. In the other, they are
all made use of, and there is frequently a demand
for more than can be had. Somebody
is always willing to give more for every part
of them, than what is sufficient to pay the expense
of bringing them to market. Their
price, therefore, can always afford some rent
to the landlord.
The skins of the larger animals were the
original materials of clothing. Among nations
of hunters and shepherds, therefore,
whose food consists chiefly in the flesh of those
animals, every man, by providing himself with
food, provides himself with the materials of
more clothing than he can wear. If there
was no foreign commerce, the greater part of
them would be thrown away as things of no
value. This was probably the case among
the hunting nations of North America, before
their country was discovered by the Europeans,
with whom they now exchange their surplus
peltry, for blankets, fire-arms, and brandy,
which gives it some value. In the present
commercial state of the known world, the
most barbarous nations, I believe, among
whom land property is established, have some
foreign commerce of this kind, and find among
their wealthier neighbours such a demand for
all the materials of clothing, which their land
produces, and which can neither be wrought
up nor consumed at home, as raises their price
above what it costs to send them to those
wealthier neighbors. It affords, therefore,
some rent to the landlord. When the greater
part of the Highland cattle were consumed
on their own hills, the exportation of their
hides made the most considerable article of
the commerce of that country, and what they
were exchanged for afforded some addition to
the rent of the Highland estates. The wool
of England, which in old times, could neither
be consumed nor wrought up at home, found
a market in the then wealthier and more industrious
country of Flanders, and its price
afforded something to the rent of the land
which produced it. In countries not better
cultivated than England was then, or than the
Highlands of Scotland are now, and which
had no foreign commerce, the materials of
clothing would evidently be so superabundant,
that a great part of them would be thrown
away as useless, and no part could afford any
rent to the landlord.
The materials of lodging cannot always be