the constitution of nature, and experience has taught us to avail ourselves more and more of the benefaction which it conveys. But what connection has all this with tayloring? The motions made by that order of workmen are not preparatory; they do not invite the co-operation of the laws of nature: and in a word, when they have finished their toil, there is nothing left for the "properties of matter to do." So much for the author's most original and luminous views on the interesting subject of production.

After production explained as above, comes distribution. The whole annual produce of the country it is well known, is divided among landlords, labourers, and capitalists, and hence the natural distribution of the proceeds to these three classes under the names of rent, wages, and profits.

Regarding the first of these particulars, namely rent, we have here an epitome of Mr. Ricardo's notions, unaccompanied, however, by the absurd inferences which that author draws from his singular hypothesis on this subject. Mr. Mill generally speaking, confines himself to the theoretical part of the system, and does not, like the author now named, address to the landholder any practical considerations, relative to his particular interests as a receiver of rents, nor inform him that, as his success implies the ruin of every other class of men, all improvements in agriculture ought to be discouraged by him, and all fair means adopted to render the soil as unfruitful as possible. The same principle is, no doubt, involved in the following axiom given at page 16, namely, that" rent increases in proportion as the effect of the capital successively bestowed upon the land decreases ;" but Mr. Mill wisely leaves it to the shrewdness of the landlord to supply himself with the valuable practical inference that, the less productive the capital is which is expended by the farmer on his fields, the better for him who is to draw the rent of these fields! The wisdom which arrives to such conclusions is unquestionably worthy of the system which describes the "laws of nature as conspiring with a taylor to make a coat.”

. All men of sense, or we ought rather to say, all men who condescend to use ordinary language on ordinary subjects, describe rent as being the difference between the cost of producing a crop, and the price at which that crop is sold; or, as Mr. Malthus expresses it, "the excess of price above the cost of production." An acre, for example, yields, we shall say, four quarters of wheat, and the wages of the labourers joined to the usual return on the farmer's capital, amount, we shall suppose to three quarters; in which case

the rent payable to the landlord, will be one quarter. Or in money, at 607. per quarter, the landlord will receive 37. per acre, whilst 91. will go to repay the cultivator for his advances of capital, whether fixed or circulating, by means of which the crop was raised.

On this very simple principle it will be easily understood how the rent should rise in proportion as the demand for agricultural produce increases, and also in proportion to the discoveries which are made for saving labour in agricultural operations: for in the first place, prices, it is very clear, will get up in proportion as corn is more and more wanted; and secondly, as rent is the excess of price above the cost of production, the cheaper the corn is raised by the farmer, that excess will of course, be greater: in other words, the rent will be augmented by the whole amount of saving on the cost of labour. We need not add, that we are here speaking without any referénce to leases; during the currency of which the farmer enjoys all the advantages arising both from the increased demand, and also from such inventions in machinery or otherwise as save labour, and aid the productiveness of the soil.

Upon the same simple principle it will be understood how an encreasing population should be one of the chief means of augmenting rent, as being the main cause of encreased demand for agricultural produce; and how, that generally speaking, the exchangeable value of corn like that of all other commodities, is regulated by the proportion which the supply bears to the demand, and consequently that the higher this exchangeable value is in ordinary circumstances of wages and capital, the higher will rents be found to rise. In a word, the price of corn rises in proportion to the demand for it, and the rent of corn land rises in proportion to the price of corn. And if to this we add, what has been already more than once stated, that rent is the excess of price above the cost of production, we shall have a clear view of the whole matter, given too on principles admitted by all men, and which all men may understand.

But Messrs. Ricardo, Mill, and their followers are not content to use common language on common subjects. They prefer expressions which have the air of paradox, and which from their obscurity only, confound the understanding of their readers. On this subject for instance, they maintain that there is in all countries some portion of land under cultivation, which pays no rent at all: such land merely remunerates the capitalist for his out-lay in labour and machinery: in short, it merely repays the cost of production. “Rent,

therefore, is the difference (says Mr. M.) between the return yielded to that portion of capital which is employed upon the land with the least effect, and that which is yielded to all the other portions employed upon it with a greater effect." This, we grant, is in one sense tantamount to saying that rent is the excess of price above the cost of production; and taken in this view, the expression is only objectionable on account of its perplexing obscurity, and the unnecessary implication of a questionable fact. It may for instance be denied that there is any where a single acre of land, under cultivation, which does not pay some rent, either in the form of an actual return above the expense of raising its produce, or in the value added to the land itself, by means of culture and improvement. But it will not be denied by any man who understands the subject, that rent is the excess of price above the cost of production, whether that rent be half a crown per acre, or ten pounds.

Nor, if the doctrine be taken practically, will its bad effects be confined to mere inconvenience of expression; for, as has been hinted above, it is capable of a very absurd and most injurious application when explained, as Mr. Ricardo has actually explained it, in connection with the interests of landed proprietors. These persons, as we have already observed, are requested to believe that the less productive the soil proves, under the hands of the farmer, and the smaller the return received from the expenditure of capital made upon it, the richer will they become, and the more rapidly will their rents increase! we are at a loss to know which of the "laws of nature conspire" to do this; but, were it not that the authors of whom we speak, are respected in their generation as true and enlightened patriots, we should imagine that they had conspired to put down common sense, and turn the heads of our landlords.

It is amazing to observe how far an absurd hypothesis will carry sensible men wrong. The most unthinking agricultarist will tell you that he pays rent for land, because it is the property of land to yield a return considerably above the whole amount of the expense which he incurs in raising a crop upon it; and moreover that he calculated what he could afford for rent by measuring as nearly as possible the excess of the return to be exported above the expence to be incurred. Rent, therefore, is a remuneration, or it may be a bonus, for the loan of a productive instrument. Fertility of soil and a favourable climate accordingly, are to be considered as gifts of Providence, and regarded to their full extent as the natural riches of every country which happen

to be blessed with them. But no, says Mr. Mill; "the portion which goes in the shape of rent to the landlord, and is over and above that return which is made to the whole of the capital and labour employed upon the land, is, in fact, the result of an accident." "It is as if that portion were by miracle rained down upon the possessor of the land which yielded it!" "It is to be considered as the accidental product of a particular virtue!" That is to say, gentle reader, you are henceforth to regard richness of soil as a miracle, and the superior fruitfulness of one piece of ground compared with another less fruitful, as the "result of an accident, and an abundant crop in a fertile field as the accidental product of a particular virtue."

We are perfectly aware all along of the plain simple truth which is concealed and buried under this mass of technical jargon. It is neither more nor less than that the richest land yields the best rent, and that this advantage available to the particular landlord is owing to the accident of his land being better than his neighbour's. If all land were equally productive, and enjoyed a local situation, in all respects equally favourable, the rent would no doubt be as near as possible equal; but if, on the contrary, there should be, as there actually is, a difference in the productive qualities of land, is there no way of accounting for the difference of rent, on the simplest of all principles, and without comparing it to a portion of wealth rained down, as it were at the instant, by miraculous interposition?

It is one of the drawbacks attending Mr. Mill's determination not to refer to authorities; that he states his opinions as if nobody besides himself had ever written on Political Economy, and, of course, passes over all the reasonings of the best writers opposed to his town views, just as if they had never been published. We are astonished that he could say all that he has said on the subject of rent, without once alluding to the powerful arguments of Mr. Malthus in reply to Sismondi and Ricardo; who, like Mr. Mill, regard rent in all circumstances, as an accident, instead of ascribing it, in peopled countries' at least, to that particular circumstance which may be said to distinguish the products of the soil from all other products, their power, namely, of maintaining more labour than what was employed in producing them; or, in other words the property of yielding a surplus over and above the cost expended on their production. Such of our readers as wish to see this interesting question discussed in the plain intelligible and ordinary language of human life, and the opinions of our modern econo

mists in regard to it, placed in their true point of view, will find their trouble amply rewarded by perusing the first six sections of the Third Chapter of Malthus' Principles of Political Economy.

We shall drop the subject therefore after making a few remarks (which we do more for the purpose of amusement than of science) on Mr. Mill's statements in support of the favourite opinion of his school, that there actually is, in every agricultural country, a portion of land which pays no rent. There is, it is admitted even by himself, a sort of prima facie objection to this abstract tenet, which appears in the wellknown fact, that nobody will give even their poorest land to be used without some sort of return in the name of rental. Dr. Smith too mentions that in his day, when land was not so much in request as at present, the most barren moors in Scotland and Norway paid something to the landlord. Our author nevertheless seems willing to deny this in effect. Unlike his countrymen, in general, he is ever impatient at the estimated value of his native hills and mosses. Surely, says he, "it cannot be so much as pretended, that the rent paid for the barren mountains of Scotland is any thing but a trifle; an evanescent quantity when we speak of any moderate extent." If it were, he adds, "about one penny per acre, this would bear so small a portion to the cost of cultivation, which would not be less than several pounds per acre, that it would little affect the truth of the conclusion we have endeavoured to establish." We leave it to Mr. Mill to determine what the cost of cultivating an acre of Ben Nevis, for example, would amount to, and to what extent the "laws of nature" would conspire "with the agriculturist in raising a crop on it, or any such low priced land;" observing, meanwhile, that he must be sorely pressed for facts to make out his case, when he instances in support of it the "barren" mountains of Scotland, at a penny an acre, and then gravely proceeds to talk of cultivating the said barren mountains, acre after acre, at the cost of" several pounds" each.

Our learned and most perspicacious author, is, notwithstanding, too ingenuous to conceal that, amidst all the triumph of his successful demonstration, the fact of a rental even at a penny per acre does indeed annoy him: inasmuch, as in order to be metaphysically exact, he must make constant corrections and allowances, whilst calculating the returns to labour and capital, afforded by the abundant crops raised on the said "barren mountains." He would fain leave out the penny, and even hints that " a very slight ad