The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 | Page 9

Come; and then, revoking this invitation, capriciously say,
Go.
[6] Down to George I. there could have been no breakfast in England
for a gentleman or lady--there is none even yet in most parts of the
Continent--without wine of some class or other.
To this doctrine, thus limited, no man could reasonably demur. But to
some people it has seemed that the limitations themselves are the only
unsound part of the argument. It is denied that this original right of
refusing a commercial intercourse has any true foundation in the
relations of things or persons. Vainly, if any such natural right existed,
would that broad basis have been laid providentially for insuring
intercourse among nations, which, in fact, we find everywhere
dispersed. Such a narrow and selfish distribution of natural gifts, all to
one man, or all to one place, has in a first stage of human inter-relations
been established, only that men might be hurried forward into a second
stage where this false sequestration might be unlocked and dispersed.
Concentrated masses, impropriations gathered into a few hands, useless
alike to the possessor and to the world, why is it that, by primary
arrangements of nature, they have been frozen into vast, inert insulation?
Only that the agencies of commerce may thus the more loudly be
invoked for thawing and setting them free to the world's use. Whereas,
by a diffusive scattering, all motives to large social intercourse would
have been neutralised.
It seems clear that the practical liberation and distribution throughout
the world of all good gifts meant for the whole household of man, has
been confided to the secret sense of a right existing in man for claiming
such a distribution as part of his natural inheritance. Many articles of
almost inestimable value to man, in relation to his physical well-being
(at any rate bearing such a value when substitutional remedies were as
yet unknown) such as mercury, Jesuit's bark, through a long period the
sole remedy for intermitting fevers, opium, mineral waters, &c., were at

one time locally concentred. In such cases, it might often happen, that
the medicinal relief to an hospital, to an encampment, to a nation,
might depend entirely upon the right to force a commercial intercourse.
Now, on the other hand, having thus noticed the question, what
commercial value has China irrevocably for England, next in the
reverse question--namely, what commercial value does England bear to
China?--I would wish to place this in a new light, by bringing it for the
first time into relation to the doctrine of rent. Multitudes in past days,
when political economy was a more favoured study, have spoken and
written upon the modern doctrine of rent, without apparently perceiving
how immediately it bears upon China, and how summarily it shatters an
objection constantly made to the value of our annual dealing with that
country. First, let me sketch, in the very briefest way, an outline of this
modern doctrine. Two men, without communication, and almost
simultaneously, in the year 1815, discovered the law of rent. Suddenly
it struck them that all manufactured products of human industry must
necessarily obey one law; whilst the products of land obey another and
opposite law. Let us for a moment consider arable land as a natural
machine for manufacturing bread. Now, in all manufactures depending
upon machinery of human invention, the natural progress is from the
worse machines to the better. No man lays aside a glove-making
machine for a worse, but only for one that possesses the old powers at a
less cost, or possesses greater powers, let us suppose, at an equal cost.
But, in the natural progress of the bread-making machines, nature
herself compels him to pursue the opposite course: he travels from the
best machines to the worse. The best land is brought into cultivation
first. As population expands, it becomes necessary to take up a second
quality of land; then a third quality; and so on for ever. Left to the
action of this one law, bread would be constantly growing dearer
through a long succession of centuries. Its tendency lies in this
direction even now; but this tendency is constantly met, thwarted, and
retarded, by a counter-tendency in the general practice of agriculture,
which is always slowly improving its own powers--that is, obtaining
the same result at a cost slowly decreasing. It follows as a consequence,
when closely pursued, that, whilst the products of pure human skill and
human machines are constantly, by tendency, growing cheaper, on the

other hand, by a counter-tendency, the products of natural machines (as
the land, mines, rivers, &c.) are constantly on the ascent. Another
consequence is, that the worst of these natural machines gives the price
for the whole; whereas, in a conflict between human machines, all the
products of the