He had made an improvement increase the four amounts of produce to

125+115+105+95-440,

and said that when the whole 440 was required, rent would be as high as before. At this stage corn would be, according to his assumptions, still only at 3% of its original price. The condition of things contemplated in the new sentence just quoted is evidently a later stage, when, say, two more portions of capital are employed and the produce is

125+115+105+95 +85+70=595, and rent, instead of 30+20+10=60, is

55+45+35+25+15=175,

the price of corn being the same as before. To allow that this increase of rent could not have happened without the improvement, and yet to maintain that the improvement is a cause of diminution rather than increase of rent is inconsistent, and there is ground for Malthus's complaint that

'It is a little singular that Mr. Ricardo, who has in general kept his attention so steadily fixed on permanent and final results as even to define the natural price of labour to be that price which would maintain a stationary population, although such a price cannot generally occur under moderately good governments and in an ordinary state of things, for hundreds of years, has always, in treating of rent, adopted an opposite course, and referred almost entirely to temporary effects.' 1

Malthus would have none of Ricardo's theory that rise of rent is to be attributed exclusively to the necessity of employing less productive industry, and reprinted his Nature and Progress of Rent in his Political Economy with very little alteration. James Mill, on the other hand, says 'rent increases in proportion as the effect of the capital successively bestowed upon the land decreases,' 2 and mentions no other cause of increase.

M'Culloch at first adopted Ricardo's theory with his usual thoroughness :

'An increase of rent is not,' he says, 'as is very generally supposed, occasioned by improvements in agriculture, or by an increase in the fertility of the soil. It results entirely from the necessity of

1 Political Economy, p. 230.

2 Elements, 1st ed. p. 16.

resorting, as population increases, to soils of a decreasing degree of fertility. Rent varies in an inverse proportion to the amount of produce obtained by means of the capital and labour employed in cultivation; that is, it increases when the profits of agricultural labour diminish, and diminishes when they increase.' 1

In the second edition of his Principles (1830), however, though he reprinted the last two sentences of this passage,2 he showed that an improvement which added to the produce of the most productive capital, and not to that of the least productive, might raise rent immediately, and insisted that if an improvement did lower rent for a time, that time would be very short.3

In 1831 a vigorous attack on the Ricardian theory was made by Richard Jones. Taking a much broader view of the matter than Ricardo, he surveyed the whole of history, instead of confining his attention to the circumstances of England during the war. It was, consequently, perfectly evident to him that the necessity of employing less productive agricultural industry was neither the only possible nor the most important actual cause of rise of rent, since in the last three hundred years, for example, rents in England had risen enormously, although the least productive agricultural industry employed was no less productive than it had been at the beginning of the period. The obvious cause of the actual rise of rent in England was, he thought, not that the most costly portion of agricultural produce was obtained at greater cost, for this was not the case, but simply that a larger amount of produce was obtained. There are, according to him, three great possible causes of rise of rent, and he puts Ricardo's 'one exclusive cause of every increase' in the third place, regarding it as much the least important. The second cause is the increasing efficiency of the capital employed,' or what Ricardo called improvements in agriculture. Improvements, he says, increase rent, except when the progress of improvement outstrips the progress of population and the growth of produce exceeds the growth of demand (an event rarely to be expected).' He ridicules Ricardo's supposition 1 Principles, 1st ed. pp. 268, 269. 3 Pp. 452-455.

2 P. 434. • Essay on the Distribution of Wealth, Part 1. Rent. Ibid., pp. 282-286.

6 Ibid., p. 213.

7 Ibid., p. 237.

of a sudden spread of improvement by which, as by the stroke of a magic wand, two-thirds of the land of a country are made to produce as much as the whole did immediately before, while the population continues the same and no more' :

'It is only necessary to remember the slowly progressive manner in which agricultural improvements are practically discovered, completed, and spread to perceive how very visionary this supposition of Mr. Ricardo's really is. If two-thirds of the lands of England should ever produce as much as the whole does now (an event extremely probable), we may be quite sure that it will be by no sudden and magical stride that the improvement will establish itself: that the means of effecting it will be discovered in small portions at a time, perhaps at considerable intervals, and will be adopted into general practice tardily, and, we may almost predict, reluctantly and suspiciously. In the meantime, population and the demand for raw produce will not have been standing still. In the process by which increased supplies of food are produced for an increasing population, we observe no such wide dislocation between the supply and demand, no such sudden starts and jerks as Mr. Ricardo is driven to suppose, in order to prove that all improvements in agriculture are unfavourable to the interests of the landlords. As the mass of the people slowly increase, we see the gradual pressure of demand stimulating the agriculturists to improvements, which, by an imperceptible progression of the supply, keep the people fed. While these processes are going on, every increase of produce occasioned by the general application to the old soils of more capital, acting upon them with unequal effect according to the differences of their original fertility, raises rents; and the interests of the landlords are at no moment opposed to improvements.' 1

The cause of rise of rent which Jones places first is 'increase of produce caused by the use of more capital in cultivation,'2 without any decrease of the productiveness of the least productive industry employed. If we go back once more to Ricardo's supposition of an equal amount of capital, let us say x, producing on four areas of land

100+90+80+70=340 quarters of corn, it is evident that if the demand increased to 680 quarters of

1 Essay, pp. 211, 212; referred to on p. 238.

9 Ibid., p. 190.

corn, and this amount could be raised by employing 2x on each area without any diminution of returns, so as to produce 200+180+160+140, rent would rise from 30+20+10 to 60+40+20. Such a change is quite possible and probable, although Ricardo, as Jones complains, says 'if capital could be indefinitely employed without a diminished return on the old land there could be no rise of rent.' If, however, we suppose that cultivation is always exactly as extensive as it would be if the cultivators started with a tabula rasa, so to speak, the change would not be a possible one unless an 'improvement' had been introduced. For if to produce 680 quarters the most profitable plan is to employ 2x, producing 200 quarters, on land No. 1, 2x, producing 180 quarters, on land No. 2, and so on, then the most profitable method of producing only 340 quarters would not be to employ x on land No. 1, x on land No. 2, a on land No. 3, and x on land No. 4, but to employ 2x on land No. 1, and ≈ on land No. 2. And if there has been an improvement,' the case is covered by the admission of Ricardo's second edition that an improvement 'will give to the land a capability of bearing at some future period a higher rent, because with the same price of food there will be a great additional quantity.' As a matter of fact, of course, cultivators do not usually start with a tabula rasa, as Ricardo imagines when he talks about 'the first settling of a country.' So it might very well happen that x of capital might be employed on each of Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4, although looking at the matter a priori, and disregarding the facts that lands Nos. 3 and 4 are prepared for cultivation, and that a portion of the population is settled upon them, it might be said to be more 'profitable' to employ 2x on No. 1, fx on No. 2, and nothing on Nos. 3 and 4.

2

Senior, writing in 1836, makes no very positive contribution to the theory of the subject, but he attributes the rise of rents in England since 1700 to increase in the productiveness of the land.3

1 Essay, p. 297. Ricardo, Principles, 1st ed. p. 57 ; 3d ed. in Works, p. 37. Ricardo apparently for the moment took 'the old land' to consist of one quality only.

2 2d ed. p. 517; 3d ed. in Works, p. 251; quoted above, p. 331.

Political Economy, 8vo ed. p. 139.

In his chapter on the Influence of the progress of industry and population on rents, profits, and wages,' J. S. Mill gave full weight to the admission in Ricardo's third edition of the fact that improvements 'ultimately' benefit landlords, and appears to have been sometimes, at any rate, ready to admit that the actual historical rise of rent had been caused by improvements, and not by the necessity of employing less productive industry to raise the increased quantity of produce required.1 But, in spite of M'Culloch, he adhered to the Ricardian theory that an improvement must diminish rent unless or until there is an increase of demand for produce. Dividing improvements into (1) those which 'enable a given quantity of food to be produced at less cost, but not on a smaller surface of land than before,' and (2) those which 'enable a given extent of land to yield, not only the same produce with less labour, but a greater produce; so that if no greater produce is required, a part of the land already under culture may be dispensed with,' he says that, under the circumstances supposed, 'by the former of the two kinds of improvement rent would be diminished. By the second it would be diminished still more.' 2 To show the truth of the proposition, he assumes 'that the demand for food requires the cultivation of three qualities of land, yielding on an equal surface, and at an equal expense, 100, 80, and 60 bushels of wheat.' These will yield corn rents of 40+20=60 bushels, and if the 'equal expense' be £x, they will yield money rents of } £x+} £x = £x. Mill then supposes an improvement to be made which, without enabling more corn to be grown, enables the same corn to be grown with one-fourth less labour,' meaning by this that the three equal surfaces of land are to continue yielding 100+80+60 bushels, but that the equal expense is to be reduced on each equal surface from £x to

Ex. Corn rent will then, he says, remain the same as before, but as the price of wheat will fall one-fourth, the money rent will be reduced from £x to £x. The fact that the corn rent remains the same, however, obviously results

1 Principles, Bk. IV. chap. iii. ; and see above, pp. 175-182.

2 Principles, Bk. IV. chap. iii. § 4, 1st ed. vol. ii. pp. 270, 271; People's ed. pp. 434, 435.