He sometimes demands rent for what is altogether incapable of human improvement.Kelp is a species of sea-weed, which, when burnt, yields an alkaline salt, useful for making glass, soap, and for several other purposes.It grows in several parts of Great Britain, particularly in Scotland, upon such rocks only as lie within the high water mark, which are twice every day covered with the sea, and of which the produce, therefore, was never augmented by human industry.The landlord, however, whose estate is bounded by a kelp shore of this kind, demands a rent for it as much as for his corn fields.
The sea in the neighbourhood of the islands of Shetland is more than commonly abundant in fish, which makes a great part of the subsistence of their inhabitants.But in order to profit by the produce of the water, they must have a habitation upon the neighbouring land.The rent of the landlord is in proportion, not to what the farmer can make by the land, but to what he can make both by the land and by the water.It is partly paid in sea-fish;and one of the very few instances in which rent makes a part of the price of that commodity is to be found in that country.
The rent of the land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the use of the land, is naturally a monopoly price.It is not at all proportioned to what the landlord may have laid out upon the improvement of the land, or to what he can afford to take; but to what the farmer can afford to give.
Such parts only of the produce of land can commonly be brought to market of which the ordinary price is sufficient to replace the stock which must be employed in bringing them thither, together with its ordinary profits.If the ordinary price is more than this, the surplus part of it will naturally go to the rent of land.If it is not more, though the commodity may be brought to market, it can afford no rent to the landlord.
Whether the price is or is not more depends upon the demand.
There are some parts of the produce of land for which the demand must always be such as to afford a greater price than what is sufficient to bring them to market; and there are others for which it either may or may not be such as to afford this greater price.The former must always afford a rent to the landlord.The latter sometimes may, and sometimes may not, according to different circumstances.
Rent, it is to be observed, therefore, enters into the composition of the price of commodities in a different way from wages and profit.High or low wages and profit are the causes of high or low price; high or low rent is the effect of it.It is because high or low wages and profit must be paid, in order to bring a particular commodity to market, that its price is high or low.But it is because its price is high or low; a great deal more, or very little more, or no more, than what is sufficient to pay those wages and profit, that it affords a high rent, or a low rent, or no rent at all.
The particular consideration, first, of those parts of the produce of land which always afford some rent; secondly, of those which sometimes may and sometimes may not afford rent; and, thirdly, of the variations which, in the different periods of improvement, naturally take place in the relative value of those two different sorts of rude produce, when compared both with one another and with manufactured commodities, will divide this chapter into three parts.
PART 1
Of the Produce of Land which always affords Rent AS men, like all other animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence, food is always, more or less, in demand.It can always purchase or command a greater or smaller quantity of labour, and somebody can always be found who is willing to do something in order to obtain it.The quantity of labour, indeed, which it can purchase is not always equal to what it could maintain, if managed in the most economical manner, on account of the high wages which are sometimes given to labour.But it can always purchase such a quantity of labour as it can maintain, according to the rate at which the sort of labour is commonly maintained in the neighbourhood.
But land, in almost any situation, produces a greater quantity of food than what is sufficient to maintain all the labour necessary for bringing it to market in the most liberal way in which that labour is ever maintained.The surplus, too, is always more than sufficient to replace the stock which employed that labour, together with its profits.Something, therefore, always remains for a rent to the landlord.
The most desert moors in Norway and Scotland produce some sort of pasture for cattle, of which the milk and the increase are always more than sufficient, not only to maintain all the labour necessary for tending them, and to pay the ordinary profit to the farmer or owner of the herd or flock; but to afford some small rent to the landlord.The rent increases in proportion to the goodness of the pasture.The same extent of ground not only maintains a greater number of cattle, but as they are brought within a smaller compass, less labour becomes requisite to tend them, and to collect their produce.The landlord gains both ways, by the increase of the produce and by the diminution of the labour which must be maintained out of it.
The rent of land not only varies with its fertility, whatever be its produce, but with its situation, whatever be its fertility.Land in the neighbourhood of a town gives a greater rent than land equally fertile in a distant part of the country.
