An Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent, and the Principles by which it is Regulated. | Page 4

some notes on rent, which,
with others on different subjects relating to political economy, I have
collected in the course of my professional duties at the East India
College. It has been my intention, at some time or other, to put them in
a form for publication; and the very near connection of the subject of
the present inquiry, with the topics immediately under discussion, has
induced me to hasten its appearance at the present moment. It is the
duty of those who have any means of contributing to the public stock of
knowledge, not only to do so, but to do it at the time when it is most
likely to be useful. If the nature of the disquisition should appear to the
reader hardly to suit the form of a pamphlet, my apology must be, that
it was not originally intended for so ephemeral a shape.

RENT, &c.

The rent of land is a portion of the national revenue, which has always
been considered as of very high importance.

According to Adam Smith, it is one of the three original sources of
wealth, on which the three great divisions of society are supported.
By the Economists it is so pre-eminently distinguished, that it is
considered as exclusively entitled to the name of riches, and the sole
fund which is capable of supporting the taxes of the state, and on which
they ultimately fall.
And it has, perhaps, a particular claim to our attention at the present
moment, on account of the discussions which are going on respecting
the corn laws, and the effects of rent on the price of raw produce, and
the progress of agricultural improvement.
The rent of land may be defined to be that portion of the value of the
whole produce which remains to the owner of the land, after all the
outgoings belonging to its cultivation, of whatever kind, have been paid,
including the profits of the capital employed, estimated according to
the usual and ordinary rate of the profits of agricultural stock at the
time being.
It sometimes happens, that from accidental and temporary
circumstances, the farmer pays more, or less, than this; but this is the
point towards which the actual rents paid are constantly gravitating,
and which is therefore always referred to when the term is used in a
general sense.
The immediate cause of rent is obviously the excess of price above the
cost of production at which raw produce sells in the market.
The first object therefore which presents itself for inquiry, is the cause
or causes of the high price of raw produce.
After very careful and repeated revisions of the subject, I do not find
myself able to agree entirely in the view taken of it, either by Adam
Smith, or the Economists; and still less, by some more modern writers.
Almost all these writers appear to me to consider rent as too nearly
resembling in its nature, and the laws by which it is governed, the

excess of price above the cost of production, which is the characteristic
of a monopoly.
Adam Smith, though in some parts of the eleventh chapter of his first
book he contemplates rent quite in its true light,(1) and has interspersed
through his work more just observations on the subject than any other
writer, has not explained the most essential cause of the high price of
raw produce with sufficient distinctness, though he often touches on it;
and by applying occasionally the term monopoly to the rent of land,
without stopping to mark its more radical peculiarities, he leaves the
reader without a definite impression of the real difference between the
cause of the high price of the necessaries of life, and of monopolized
commodities.
Some of the views which the Economists have taken of the nature of
rent appear to me, in like manner, to be quite just; but they have mixed
them with so much error, and have drawn such preposterous and
contradictory conclusions from them, that what is true in their doctrines,
has been obscured and lost in the mass of superincumbent error, and
has in consequence produced little effect. Their great practical
conclusion, namely, the propriety of taxing exclusively the net rents of
the landlords, evidently depends upon their considering these rents as
completely disposable, like that excess of price above the cost of
production which distinguishes a common monopoly.
M. Say, in his valuable treatise on political economy, in which he has
explained with great clearness many points which have not been
sufficiently developed by Adam Smith, has not treated the subject of
rent in a manner entirely satisfactory. In speaking of the different
natural agents which, as well as the land, co-operate with the labours of
man, he observes, 'Heureusement personne n'a pu dire