Nature and Progress of Rent

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.