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RELATIVITY-RELEASE

ised form. The Ricardian law, so far as it claims to determine the actual payments made by the cultivators of the soil, is a relative doctrine, that is to say, it is based on assumptions, which, as regards both time and place, hold good over a limited range only. The theory of economic rent in its most generalised form, however, merely affirms that where different portions of the total amount of any commodity of uniform quality supplied to the same market are produced at different costs, those portions which are raised at the smaller costs will yield a differential profit; and there is now no similar limitation to its applicability. This principle may even be said to hold good in a socialistic community, for the differential profit does not cease to exist either by being ignored or by being municipalised or nationalised. To take a further illustration, there is a good deal of abstract reasoning in regard to the laws of SUPPLY AND DEMAND that has a very wide application indeed. These laws work themselves out differently under different conditions, and in particular there are differences in the rapidity with which they operate. Their operation may, however, be detected beneath the surface even in states of society where custom exerts the most rigid sway. In all these cases and others similar the principles involved and the modes of investigation employed have a significance and importance which it would be misleading to call merely relative; and hence as regards the more abstract portions of economic doctrine the principle of relativity cannot be accepted.

279

relativity in political economy, a word or two may be added with regard to the relativity of economic definitions. Partly on account of the familiarity of much of its subject-matter, and partly for reasons connected with the growth of the science, political economy is for the most part limited in its nomenclature to terms already in common use. In different departments of economic enquiry, however, lines of distinction may need to be drawn at rather different points, and hence it is sometimes difficult to avoid the multiplication of technical terms, unless we are content to use the same terms in slightly varying senses in different connections. Thus, from the point of view of PRODUCTION it may be convenient to give a definition of WEALTH, not in all respects identical with the definition that is appropriate from the standpoint of DISTRIBUTION. Again, with special reference to its measurement, there may be advantages in defining wealth differently from the cosmopolitan, national, and individual points of view respectively. This procedure, that is to say, the frank adoption of the principle of relativity in framing economic definitions, has considerable weight of authority in its favour; but it is clear that, in so far as it is adopted, special precautions are necessary to avoid confusion. Further, economic definitions may be relative, not only to different points of view or different departments of study, but also to different stages of industrial development. Thus, in relation to the complex conditions of modern trade and industry, such terms as MARKET and MONEY may need different definitions from those that are appropriate in relation to more primitive conditions. Whilst, however, many economic definitions may be allowed to possess a relative or progressive character, this relativity cannot be extended to the ultimate analysis of the fundamental conceptions of the science. If these conceptions assume a somewhat different character in different connections, we shall still find something generic or universal in each one of them. Hence in the case of economic definitions as well as in that of economic doctrines, the admission of the principle of relativity must not be absolute or unqualified.

The relativity of concrete economic truths, together with the universality of fundamental economic principles, might be illustrated by reference to the writings of the classical English economists. The historical school have rightly taught us that the works of these economists can be fully understood and appreciated only if they are studied in close connection with the economic history of the times when they wrote. Frequently the assumptions on which their reasonings are based have a special relation to the actual circumstances of their time; or, even if this is not the case, the form in which their doctrines are cast, or the emphasis laid upon particular points, will often be found to be specially related to the economic conditions in the midst of which they wrote. It is, however, going much too far to regard their whole teaching as limited throughout by the character of relativity which belongs to some of it. Much of what they wrote will be valuable for all time, not merely because of the light which their doctrines throw on the phenomena of particular periods, but because the principles underlying their best work are not confined in their applicability to any narrow or limitedschaften]. sphere.

[For further discussion in connection with this article, see ABSTRACT POLITICAL ECONOMY; HISTORICAL METHOD; HISTORICAL SCHOOL OF ECONOMISTS. Reference may be made to Bagehot, Economic Studies.-Ingram, History of Political Economy.-Jevons, "The Future of Political Economy" (Fortnightly Review, November 1876). -Keynes, Scope and Method of Political Economy. -Knies, Die politische Oekonomie vom geschichtlichen Standpunkte.-Cliffe Leslie, Essays in Political and Moral Philosophy. Schmoller, Zur Litteraturgeschichte der Staats- und Sozialwissen

J. N. K.

RELEASE is a general name for the waiver

In connection with the general subject of or renouncement of rights. An interest in

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land is conveyed by release, if the effect of such conveyance is the enlargement of the estate previously held by the person to whom such interest is conveyed. Thus, if a leasehold interest in land is to be enlarged into a freehold interest, the lessor releases his interest in such land to the lessee.

During the first half of the 19th century the usual form of conveyance of land was by "lease and release"; the person wishing to convey the land in the first instance granted a lease, and at the same time executed a deed dated a day subsequent to the lease by which he released his interest. This somewhat cumbrous method, which was introduced during the 17th century

for the purpose of evading the provisions of the Statute of Enrolments, was simplified in 1841, and rendered unnecessary by the Real Property Act of 1845. Releases operating as conveyances are therefore much less frequent now than they were before that time.

The most common use of the word "release in modern times occurs in the case of trust funds being divided among the beneficiaries, who thus "release and discharge" the trustees from the trust property, "and all actions, proceedings, claims, and demands in relation thereto." A release of

this nature is, however, ineffective, unless all the

facts are fully set out in the recitals, and it is also advisable that the parties executing the release should be separately advised, so as to avoid the possibility of the release being set aside on the ground of the beneficiaries not having been in a position to form an independent judgment. E. 8. RELEGATIO. The Roman punishment of banishment to a particular place; not, like deportatio, entailing loss of civil rights.

E. A. W.

RELIEF. The relief, with the other incidents of feudal tenure, was introduced into England by William the Conqueror. Its origin is to be traced in continental usage, and its growth coincides with that of hereditary succession. Early grants of land seem to have been made for the lifetime of the recipient, but it soon became usual to renew the grant to the heir of a deceased occupant, especially if the heir were willing to pay a sum to his lord for such renewal. As the right of succession to land hardened into law, so did this customary payment on the part of the heir, which is known as relevamentum or relevium. Thus the relief differs from the Anglo-Saxon HERIOT, in that the former implies, and the latter does not imply, a suspension of ownership. But the two payments were so similar in respect of occasion and incidence that the Norman lawyers found it difficult to avoid confusion between them. All lands granted by the Conqueror to his Norman followers, or re-granted to English holders, were henceforth bound to pay a relief on a change of occupants, and the same condition was naturally enforced by the mesne lords in their grants to sub-tenants. The amount payable was at first very uncertain,

and William Rufus and Ranulf Flambard found reliefs a convenient method of exaction. Church lands were free from the obligation of reliefs, as from those of wardship and marriage; but Flambard, in his endeavour to extend to the church the usages of lay fiefs, hit upon the plan of demanding a relief directly from the sub-tenants of a bishop on the occasion of a vacancy in the see. At the same time exorbitant reliefs were exacted from the heirs of royal tenants, the penalty for non-payment being forfeiture of the inherited estates. These exactions caused great discontent, and Henry I. sought to conciliate support by a clause in his charter, which runs: "If any of my barons, earls, or other tenants shall die, his heir shall not buy back his land as he used to do in my brother's time, but shall relieve it by a just and lawful relief; and in like manner the men of my barons shall relieve their lands by a just and lawful relief." From this time there was a constant struggle to obtain an exact definition of the "just and lawful relief," and gradually the royal claims were subjected, first to customary, and then to written, limitations. Glanvill, writing in the time of Henry II., states that the "reasonable" relief for a knight's fee is 100s., and for land held in SOCAGE one year's rent from the land; but the chief barons must satisfy the king according to the royal will and mercy. The author of the DIALOGUS DE SCACCARIO tells us that the relief for the KNIGHT'S FEE is 100s., but that the heir to a barony must make his own bargain with the king. In Magna Carta the barons finally got rid of this remaining uncertainty. Art. 2 declares that the Antiquum relevium is £100 on an earl's barony or a baron's barony; 100s. on the knight's fee; and in other cases according to ancient custom. By the time of Edward I. the relief on a baron's barony had been reduced from £100 to 100 marks. In spite of the steady decay of FEUDALISM, the crown retained its rights to reliefs and to the other feudal incidents until the time of the Stuarts. Under James I. Robert Cecil endeavoured to arrange with parliament for a commutation of these ancient but still lucrative rights for a fixed annual revenue, but the "great contract" was never carried through. During the rebellion and the commonwealth the crown rights and the machinery for enforcing them fell into abeyance, and it would have been preposterous to attempt their revival at the restoration. Accordingly, in 1660, the convention parliament passed the statute by which reliefs and other feudal payments were abolished and the hereditary excise was granted to the crown in their place.

[Stubbs, Select Charters and Constitutional History. Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, bk. ii. ch. i. § 7.-Round, Feudal England, pp. 308-311.]

R. L

RELIEF. See POOR LAW.

RELIEF-RENAUDOT

REMAINDER. The legal conception of a REMAINDER is dependent on the legal conception of an ESTATE (q.v.). An estate is conceived in English law as involving not only the ownership of lands, etc., but also the length of time for which that ownership will last. If a man holds land in fee simple his estate in that land is infinite in point of time; he may cut it in pieces of different time-lengths, and assign each piece to a separate person, who is said to possess his portion of the estate now, although he may not enjoy the land itself for years. After all the finite portions have been distributed, there will still remain a portion of infinite duration; this the original holder of the fee simple may keep for himself or assign to another; in the former case it is a reversion, and in the latter a remainder.

[For a more elaborate explanation see Sir Wm. Markby's Elements of Law.]

A. E. S.

REMEDY (MINT).* A term used to express the amount of variation permitted by law from the exact standard, either of weight or of fineness, of coins issued from the mint. Absolute conformity to the legal weight and fineness, in the case of every coin struck, is mechanically impossible, at the rate of speed at which coins are made. A reasonable margin of variation ("remedy") is therefore provided for by the coinage laws.

In the case of British imperial coinage, the remedies now in force are those fixed by the Coinage Act of 1891 (54 & 55 Vict. c. 72). They are set forth in the schedule to that act as follows:

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916.6.

GOLD:
Five-pound

SILVER:

Crown

Double-florin

Half-crown

Florin

Shilling

Sixpence

Groat or four

fine silver,

alloy; or millesimal fineness

925.

2.000 0.1296
1-678 0.1087
1.264 0-0788
0.997 0.0646
0.578 0.0375
0.346 0.0224

0.262 0-0170
0.212 0.0138
0.144 0.0093
0.087
0.0056

Millesimal

Fineness.

281

grain. The standard weight of this coin being 123 27447 grains, it follows that no sovereign may be issued from the mint which weighs more than 123 47447 grains, or less than 123 07447 grains. The remedy of fineness being 2 per mille, and the legal fineness 916.6, the metal of which a sovereign is composed must not be of a higher millesimal fineness than 918.6, or lower than 914.6. Though the entire range of variation thus permitted is not great, the extreme limits of remedy are seldom approached, especially in the case of gold coins. The verdict of the jury at the trial of the Pyx (q.v.) held in July 1905, records that of the sovereigns then examined (coins struck during the preceding twelve months), the heaviest weighed 123-285 grains and the lightest 123 108 grains. The coin richest in gold proved to be of the millesimal fineness of 916-86, while the poorest only fell to 916.46, the coins being within the standard prescribed by law.

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REMONETISATION means the renewed use of some metal for purposes (1) of currency, (2) or as a standard in currency. (1) Thus Frederick II.'s Sicilian solidus, the Florentine (1252) and English (1257, 1343-44) florins represent the remonetisation of gold in Europe. (2) If European nations opened their mints to unlimited purchase of silver, which should be coined so that mint values = commercial values, and then made the silver coins unlimited legal tender, this would be the remonetisation of silver (see DEMONETISATION; SILVER STANDARD).

J. D. R.

AS

RENAUDOT, THEOPHRASTE (1584-1653) a physician and historiographer of France, who, through the interest of Richelieu, was appointed in 1612 general commissary of all the poor of the kingdom. Despite vigorous police ordinances, France and especially Paris were infested by legions of beggars, discharged soldiers, and persons ruined by the civil and foreign wars.

In 1630, Renaudot revived an idea originated by MONTAIGNE (q.v.) and obtained a licence "to open Offices or Registers of Addresses for the wants of all classes. and to practise or establish anything which might generally be useful or advisable for the regulation of the poor." His main object was to provide them with work through the agency of his Bureaux, after having in vain endeavoured to obtain employment for them, in cleansing the streets of Paris, a scheme he had been compelled to abandon by the Paris magistrates, eager at that time to oppose any project supported by the court. He It will be seen from the above table that the explained his views in the Inventaire des remedy for the weight of the sovereign is 0.2

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Mixed metal,

Halfpenny

copper, tin,

Farthing

and zinc.

2.91666 0.18899
1.75000 0.11339
0-87500 0-05669

None.

adresses du Bureau de Rencontre, a very few

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copies of which are still to be found in public repositories. Each entry in the registers cost only 3 sous, or for the poor was inscribed free. Renaudot also established, to assist the latter, his consultations charitables, and the first of the MONTS DE PIÉTÉ opened in l'aris.

His Traité des Pauvres is lost. The success of Renaudot's Bureaux was such that he started in 1631 a Gazette to supply public news as well as the advertisements of the Bureaux; later on it took the name of the Gazette de France, and is the oldest French newspaper in existence. Renaudot also opposed the absurd medical theories then prevalent in the faculty of medicine at Paris, and sought to introduce instead the experimental method. He thus aroused an implacable animosity, which embittered the end of

his life.

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The work is divided into two books; the first deals with the discovery and subsequent history of the island up till the close of the Maroon War in 1796, and the return of the governor, Lord Balcarras, in 1801. Book ii. treats of the climate, soil, scenery, and natural productions of the island; of the towns, churches, courts, trade, revenue, taxes, coins, and militia. Ch. iv. is divided into eight sections, each of which describes one of the commercial products of Jamaica. Ch. v. deals at some length with the history of slavery there; strongly emphasises the necessity of doing the negroes justice, and of setting them free. author deplores the contempt which the white expresses for the coloured man.

A. L.

The

RENOUARD, AUGUSTIN CHARLES (17941878), was born and died at Paris. He left the normal school during the first empire, and, devoting himself to law, he was, at the time of the restoration, much esteemed as a counsel in difficult cases.

the court of appeal. It was he who, in the name
of justice, brought in an indictment against the
author of the Coup d'état of 1851, which brute force
alone prevented him from following up. He kept
aloof from public affairs during the whole of the
second empire, and during that time he published
Du droit industriel dans ses rapports avec les
principes du droit civil sur les personnes et sur les
choses, 8vo, 1860. After 1871, having been ap-
pointed procureur-général to the court of appeal,
he spoke several times and with great weight. In
the speech which made most stir, and by which
even Berlin was moved, he refuted the famous
aphorism, La Force prime le Droit. We are also
indebted to Renouard for publishing the Mélanges
de morale d'économie et de politique of Benjamin
Franklin, preceded by a notice of his life, 3rd ed.

18mo. In 1861 he was elected to the Insti-
tut (Académie des Sciences morales et politiques),
and in 1876 he became a senator. In 1845 he
was elected vice-president, and in 1865 president,
of the Economic Society of Paris.
A. C. f.

RENT

Rent, Basis of, p. 282; Rent does not enter into Cost of
Production, p. 284; Rent of Ability, p. 285; Rent-
Charge, p. 286; Rent-Charge, Medieval, p. 286;
Rent, Labour, Medieval, p. 287; Rent of Land, p.
287; Rent, Sec, p. 289.

RENT, BASIS OF. "Rent," wrote RICARDO, "is that portion of the produce of the earth which is paid to the landlord for the use of the original and indestructible powers of the soil." "The income derived from the ownership of land and other free gifts of nature is called Rent"; is the form of definition adopted by Professor MARSHALL. Both writers take care to

point out that the word is commonly used to cover payments of a different character. Moreover, the modern developments of economic analysis have shown that land is but a special and specially important member of a large class, and that the income derived from the ownership of special facilities of production not accessible to all, possesses economic characteristics which correspond closely to those of the rent of land.

con

In

A growing custom of modern writers is to employ the word rent for the whole class. This course is not altogether unexceptionable, though it possesses spicuous advantages for many purposes. this article the reference to land will be retained, though the conceptions dealt with will be such as to have a much wider application. Such extension of their application is not to be understood as excluded by the restriction of the terms used to the problem of land-rent.

About 1825 he published several works on moral and legal subjects, the most important of which is his Traité des brevets d'invention, 1st ed. 8vo, 1825; 2nd ed. 8vo, 1844. After 1830 Guizot took him up; he became a privy councillor, then a deputy, and finally a peer of France. In the chamber he introduced several laws, especially that on primary education, Guizot's highest title to fame. During this period Renouard published Mémoire sur la statistique de la justice civile en France, inserted in 1835 in Wolowski's Revue de législation et de jurisprudence; Traité des droits des auteurs dans la littérature, les sciences et les beaux-arts, 1838-39, 2 vols. 8vo, and finally, Traité des faillites et banqueroutes, 2100, etc., per cent, more than another field of vols. 8vo, 1st ed. 1842; 2nd ed. 1844; 3rd ed. 1857. After 1848 Renouard practised again at

The basis of rent, as indicated in what precedes, is to be found in the fact that the product of equal outlays of effort or of capital under different conditions is by no means identical. In reference to land, one field may produce, under similar cultivation, 25, 50,

equal area, the soil of which is of a different nature, or whose advantages in other respects

RENT, BASIS OF

are different. A difference of situation, affecting convenience of cultivation or access to markets, operates as effectively as a difference in the mechanical nature or chemical constituents of the soil.

The essential underlying basis of rent is this difference of return to equal effort, and the amount which rent can reach is measured by the amount of the difference. Clearly the doctrine, even so briefly stated as in the definitions quoted above, assumes the ownership of the productive facilities in question, assumes that they are not equally open to every producer in fact; and this carries with it the other point, that an indefinite extent of productive facilities of the most favourable nature is not available. The best is limited, and is made the subject of ownership. The necessity to utilise opportunities less favourable than the best existing brings the fact and degree of their superiority to the front, and gives it value.

As in the illustration used by Ricardo, we may suppose land of three qualities, numbered accordingly, to yield with equal employment of capital and labour :-No. 1, 100 quarters; No. 2, 90 quarters; No. 3, 80 quarters. So long as there is No. 1 land unappropriated and free to any one to use, no rent emerges. It is only when the needs of the community become such as to require the cultivation of No. 2 land, and, later, of No. 3, that rent appears. When the best land freely available is of No. 2 quality, the cultivator would get an equal return for himself by paying 10 quarters for the right to raise 100 quarters on No. 1 land, as by raising, rent free, 90 quarters on No. 2 land. Similarly, when the best land freely available is of No. 3 quality, the payment for the privilege of using No. 1 land might rise to 20 quarters; for using No. 2 land to 10 quarters; while which ever quality of land was used under such a scale of payments, 80 quarters would be the return to the cultivator's efforts which remained for himself.

The differences in the amount of labour needed to give equal results may be due to the necessity for the expenditure of considerable labour in conveying the produce to market, if the land be remote from the market for its produce. Thus, of two portions of land, A and B, on each of which 100 quarters is the return to the same expenditure of capital and labour, if the carriage of the produce of A to the market be covered by the sale of 2 quarters, while the carriage of B's produce absorbs the worth of 12 quarters, A will bear a rent of 10 quarters more than B. If B be no-rent land, A's rent will be 10 quarters.

Another view of the matter is not less important than this, since it brings out the importance of the law of DIMINISHING RETURNS, as applied to land in the determination of the rent of the land.

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283

Let it be assumed that, when the whole of the No. 1 land is taken up, it is found that the expenditure of twice as much capital and labour as before on a plot of No. 1 land yields 195 quarters; that is, that the return is increased by 95 quarters. Capital and labour will thus, by the more intensive cultivation of No. 1 land, be able to procure a yield of 95 quarters, while, if expended on No. 2 land, but 90 quarters would be yielded. It will not, in this case, be necessary to resort to No. 2 land so long as the supply obtained by the more intensive cultivation of No. 1 is sufficient. Using the term 'dose," after James MILL (see DOSES OF CAPITAL), to indicate the expenditure of capital and labour contemplated as yielding respectively 100, 90, and 80 quarters on the different qualities of land, we may now say that a dose of capital and labour can yield on No. 1 land, by more intensive cultivation, 95 quarters. This amount must therefore be sufficient to remunerate the cultivator who is induced to expend the dose for this return, or it would not have been expended. If it were insufficient, a single dose only, yielding its 100 quarters, would be expended on No. 1 land; if we assume that it is possible to regard labour and capital as applied in "indivisible" doses, for the purposes of the present argument. If 95 quarters remunerate the second dose, they will suffice to remunerate the first, and 190 quarters will remunerate the two doses, while 195 quarters are produced. The remaining five quarters may be exacted as the price of the privilege of using No. 1 land. Similar arguments apply to yet more intensive cultivation. Thus even without the necessity for assuming the existence of land bearing no rent, as a means of determining the level from which rent may be measured, a point from which to measure rent in any individual case is capable of determination, namely, the point at which, in the more and more INTENSIVE CULTIVATION of the land, the stage is reached at which the increase of return produced by the application of additional capital and labour to the land would just, and only just, be sufficient to make it worth while to apply such additional effort to the land.

Whether from difference in the nature or situation of different portions of land, therefore, or from different powers of response to effort expended on the same land varying with the stage of intensity of cultivation previous to the expenditure of this effort, the amount of rent and the reason for its existence rest on differential advantages for the application of this or that dose of capital and labour. If all land possessed equal advantages, and if the return to capital and labour expended on land were in accordance with the LAW OF CONSTANT RETURN, rent would not emerge.

The expression "original and indestructible powers of the soil," used by Ricardo, has given

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