Thus much for the contradiction of the theory by the facts in the case. The refutation of it in principle, or by abstract reasoning, is equally easy. And first, it is to be observed, that the natural fertility, or what Ricardo calls the original and inherent powers of the soil, as an element of rent, are wholly insignificant in comparison with nearness to market. The most barren soils in the world, even hard rock, pure sand, or stagnant marsh, should a populous and wealthy city spring up in the neighborhood, will yield rent, often a large rent, because they afford a field which human industry and skill can convert into a productive garden. On the other hand, soil of the greatest natural fertility, if it be far distant from any market for agricultural produce, will command no price and yield no rent. For instances of the former class, take the larger portion of the soil of Belgium and Holland, much of which has been literally reclaimed from the sea, against which it is now protected by stupendous dikes, and a still larger part was originally barren sand, on which it was first necessary to plant coarse grass, the roots of which might protect it from being perpetually shifted by the winds. Yet these broad districts of sea and sand are now the gardens of Europe, shaming even the wonders of English farming by the fulness of their crops. Two and a half acres of them yield food enough for a family of five persons. The acclivities of the Alps in Switzerland, dug out into terraces, and blooming with the olive and the vine, and many an acre of former marsh in Cambridge and Lincoln counties, England, now forming rich corn-fields, other instances of land made productive and yielding rent by vicinity to a market, in spite of the greatest natural disadvantages.

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For examples to corroborate the other branch of the statement, we have only to look at the remote West of our own fair land. Thousands of square miles of the most productive land in the world, in Kanzas and Minnesota, are even now lying tenantless, because they will not command the government price of only $1.25 an acre. And even in the more thickly settled States of the great Mississippi Valley, many a broad region yet remains waste in the ownership of the gov ernment, far superior in natural advantages to the soil of Belgium in its original condition, and for which, notwithstanding,

no one will give this almost nominal price. The reason is, that there is not market enough in the neighborhood to take off the surplus agricultural produce. If the population should increase in numbers, so as to require a larger amount of food, though at the same price at which it is now held, this waste land would soon be purchased and reduced to tillage.

This point being established, then, that the original fertility of the soil is an element of little or no importance in the theory of rent, we have only to consider that portion of Ricardo's doctrine which relates to comparative distance from the market. He maintains, that land bears rent in proportion to its nearness to the place where agricultural produce is needed and consumed; and that the increase of population, consequently, is an evil, because the community are obliged to send farther and farther off for their supplies. Here is the great and obvious fallacy, of supposing that the population, as it increases, remains stationary, or on the same spot, so that the grain must be brought to it at a price enhanced by the cost of transportation. We answer, that, instead of the food coming from a distance to the population, the population go to the food. The nation expands over more space as it increases in numbers. The tide of emigration sets towards the waste lands in a current, the velocity and depth of which are proportioned to the increase in the volume of the waters. The new-comers, the addition to the nation, instead of raising the price of food for themselves and their predecessors, actually cheapen it. As they spread themselves over the waste lands, and reduce them to cultivation, they not only raise food enough for themselves, but they increase the surplus which is sent to market, to be there exchanged for manufactures and the produce of foreign climes.

This is exemplified in the history of our own New England. The average rate of increase of the population here, during the last thirty years, has been about 17 per cent for every ten years, while for the whole United States it has been about 34 per cent, or twice as large. Why is this, since the excess of births over deaths is probably as great in New England as in any other portion of the country? The answer is obvious. One half of those who are born here, and survive to the age of maturity, (one half of the surplus, I mean, over those who are needed to compensate for the deaths, and thus to keep up the

population to its original number,) emigrate to the West, and there take their part in the great work of settling the wild lands, and reducing them to tillage. And so successful have their labors been, that the price of grain and other agricultural produce has not risen in proportion to the increase of our numbers, as it ought to have done, if Ricardo's theory were true; the average price of food, all over the country, has fallen since 1800, though since that time our population has been quadrupled, and though our exports of provisions also have increased to an immense extent.

We come, then, to a theory of rent which differs very widely from that of Ricardo's. Rent depends, not on the increase, but on the distribution, of the population. It arises from the excess of the local demand over the local supply, and is therefore ultimately regulated by the expense and inconvenience of bringing the food from a distance, or by the discomforts and privations which attend the removal of a portion of the people to a new home. The migration is not necessarily directed to another country; the more remote and less populous counties or states may receive the surplus population of the metropolitan region and the manufacturing districts, and an additional supply of food will then be obtained from the agricultural labor of those who have thus found a new home. An increase in the numbers of the people may thus be followed by more than a proportional increase of the means of subsistence. The price of food, then, will not vary in proportion to the rent; on the contrary, the rent may increase indefinitely, while the price of food is diminishing. A livelihood may be more easily and cheaply obtained by commercial or manufacturing industry in a great city or a populous region, notwithstanding the considerable outlay required for rent, than by tilling the ground in a district where land may be hired for a trifling sum, or even purchased at a nominal price; and still the extension of agriculture may be so great, as the forest is cleared up and the prairie planted, that corn and flour may be bought by the inhabitants of cities more cheaply than ever. This is not mere theory, but fact; it is but a recital of the mingled experience of the manufacturing districts of New England and the border districts of cultivation in the Western States.

Not only in America, but in Great Britain and Ireland, and

indeed throughout the civilized world, it is notorious that rent is produced and increased, or, in other words, that value is given to the land, by creating a market for agricultural produce in the neighborhood of the land whence that produce is obtained; that is, by collecting a town or civic population, engaged in manufactures and commerce, who have the means to buy the wheat. By collecting such a population, I say; not by creating one, or by making the total number of the whole people larger, as Ricardo's theory requires. It is not the want of a larger supply of food, but the altered locality of the demand, and the altered habits and occupations of the people, which swell the value of the land and enhance the rent.

And, conversely, the population might be considerably enlarged, and more food consequently be required, at the very time when rents were falling throughout the country, if the process of dispersion should be going on at the same period, the people leaving the manufacturing towns and the centres of commerce, and spreading themselves over the face of the country, so that each family would come nearer the particular spot of land that feeds it. This is the evil often experienced here in America, where many towns and smaller cities upon the Atlantic coast, which were prosperous and wealthy in the latter part of the last century, and up to the close of the war in 1815, have since ceased to advance, and even retrograded, in riches and population, many of the citizens joining the great tide of migration to the Western States, because the policy of the national government was no longer favorable to manufactures, the fisheries, and commerce. Very recently, the establishment of railroads, and other local causes, have somewhat checked this tendency to dispersion; but the account here given is still applicable, in a greater or less degree, to such seaports in New England as Portsmouth, Newburyport, Salem, Nantucket, Newport, and New London, and to some formerly flourishing towns on Chesapeake Bay and the Southern Atlantic coast. Of course, as these towns dwindled, the value and the rent of farms in their immediate vicinity were also depressed, and agriculture, instead of advancing, visibly retrograded, the prices of all kinds of rural produce being kept down by the abundant supplies which began to arrive from the newly cleared regions at the West. Yet all this while the total pop

ulation of the United States was increasing with unparalleled rapidity, and, if Ricardo's theory were true, rent ought to have advanced pari passu.

To illustrate the opposite result, the rise of rents and of the prices of agricultural produce produced by the concentration of the people in manufacturing districts and towns, I might refer to such obvious instances as the neighborhood of Lowell in Massachusetts, Manchester in New Hampshire, Rochester in New York, Pittsburg in Pennsylvania, and many others, the rapid and immense increase of which in population and wealth seems almost fabulous. It is the rapidity of this increase, indeed, which proves that the result is attributable to bringing the people together, and not to the natural growth of the total population. It cannot have been from the increased number of births, that Rochester, for instance, which had a population of only 1,500 in 1820, numbered over 9,000 inhabitants in 1830, over 20,000 in 1840, and over 36,000 in 1850; or that Lowell, whose population in 1830 was about 6,500, numbered over 33,000 in 1850. For illustrations from Great Britain, in which country alone does Ricardo's theory of rent seem even plausible, I need only bring together a few passages from an able essay recently published by a French writer, M. Léonce de Lavergne, on the "Rural Economy of England, Scotland, and Ireland," * contrasted with that of France.

Up to the time of Arthur Young, he says, "the English farmers had, like all those of the Continent, worked with little view to a market. Most agricultural productions were consumed on the spot by the producers themselves; and although in England more was sold for consumption beyond the farm than anywhere else, it was not export which regulated production. Arthur Young was the first who made the English agriculturists understand the increasing importance of a market; that is to say, the sale of agricultural produce to a population not contributing to produce it. This non-agricultural population, which up to that time was inconsiderable, began to develop, and since then its increase has been immense, owing to the expansion of manufactures and commerce. Everybody

* Translated from the French, with Notes, by a Scottish Farmer. Edinburgh and London: W. Blackwood and Sons. 1855. Chapters 11, 18, 20.