endeavours to bring under strict regulations, size occasioned no sensible inconveniency; what in its own nature seems incapable of mi-and the establishment of one in the few places nute limitation; for if all persons in the same where it has yet taken place has produced no kind of work were to receive equal wages, sensible advantage. In the greater part of the there would be no emulation, and no room towns in Scotland, however, there is an inleft for industry or ingenuity." corporation of bakers, who claim exclusive Particular acts of parliament, however, still privileges, though they are not very strictly attempt sometimes to regulate wages in parti- guarded. cular trades, and in particular places. Thus CHAP. XI. The proportion between the different rates, the 8th of George III. prohibits, under heavy both of wages and profit, in the different empenalties, all master tailors in London, and ployments of labour and stock, seems not to five miles round it, from giving, and their be much affected, as has already been obworkmen from accepting, more than two shil-served, by the riches or poverty, the advancing, lings and sevenpence halfpenny a-day, except stationary, or declining state of the society. in the case of a general mourning. When- Such revolutions in the public welfare, though ever the legislature attempts to regulate the they affect the general rates both of wages and differences between masters and their work-profit, must, in the end, affect them equally in men, its counsellors are always the masters. all different employments. The proportion When the regulation, therefore, is in favour between them, therefore, must remain the of the workmen, it is always just and equit. same, and cannot well be altered, at least for able; but it is sometimes otherwise when in any considerable time, by any such revolutions. favour of the masters. Thus the law which obliges the masters in several different trades to pay their workmen in money, and not in goods, is quite just and equitable. It imposes no real hardship upon the masters. It only obliges them to pay that value in money, which they pretended to pay, but did not always really pay, in goods. This law is in favour of the workmen; but the 8th of George III. is in favour of the masters. When masters combine together, in order to reduce the wages of their workmen, they commonly enter into a private bond or agreement, not to give more than a certain wage, under a certain penalty. Were the workmen to enter into a contrary combination of the same kind, not to accept is sufficient to keep up the stock from which of a certain wage, under a certain penalty, the law would punish them very severely; and, if it dealt impartially, it would treat the masters in the same manner. But the 8th of George III. enforces by law that very regulation which masters sometimes attempt to establish by such combinations. The complaint of the workmen, that it puts the ablest and most industrious upon the same footing with an ordinary workman, seems perfectly well founded. OF THE RENT OF LAND. RENT, considered as the price paid for the use of land, is naturally the highest which the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances of the land. In adjusting the terms of the lease, the landlord endeavours to leave hin no greater share of the produce than what he furnishes the seed, pays the labour, and purchases and maintains the cattle and other instruments of husbandry, together with the ordinary profits of farming stock in the neighbourhood. This is evidently the smallest share with which the tenant can content himself, without being a loser, and the landlord seldom means to leave him any more. Whatever part of the produce, or, what is the same thing, whatever part of its price, is over and above this share, he naturally endeavours to reserve to himself as the rent of his land, which is evidently the highest the tenant can afford to pay in the actual circumstances of the land. Sometimes, indeed, the liberality, more frequently the ignorance, of the landlord, makes him accept of somewhat less than this portion; and sometimes, too, though more rarely, the ignorance of the tenant makes him undertake to pay somewhat more, or to content himself with somewhat less, than the ordinary profits of farming stock in the neighbourhood. This portion, however, may still be considered as the natural rent of land, or the rent at which it is naturally meant that land should, for the most part, be let. In ancient times, too, it was usual to attempt to regulate the profits of merchants and other dealers, by regulating the price of provisions and other goods. The assize of bread is, so far as I know, the only remnant of this ancient usage. Where there is an exclusive corporation, it may, perhaps, be proper to regulate the price of the first necessary of life; but, where there is none, the competition will regulate it much better than any assize. The method of fixing the assize of bread, established by the 31st of George II. could not be put in practice in Scotland, on account of a defect in the law, its execution depending upon the office of clerk of the market, which does not exist there. This defect was not remedied till The rent of land, it may be thought, is fre the third of George III. The want of an as-quently no more than a reasonable profit or interest for the stock laid out by the landlord | such as to afford this greater price. The forupon its improvement. This, no doubt, may mer must always afford a rent to the landlord. be partly the case upon some occasions; for it The latter sometimes may and sometimes may can scarce ever be more than partly the case. not, according to different circumstances. The landlord demands a rent even for unim- Rent, it is to be observed, therefore, enters proved land, and the supposed interest or pro- into the composition of the price of commofit upon the expense of improvement is gene-dities in a different way from wages and prorally an addition to this original rent. Those fit. High or low wages and profit are the improvements, besides, are not always made causes of high or low price; high or low rent by the stock of the landlord, but sometimes is the effect of it. It is because high or low by that of the tenant. When the lease comes wages and profit must be paid, in order to to be renewed, however, the landlord com- bring a particular commodity to market, that monly demands the same augmentation of rent its price is high or low. But it is because its as if they had been all made by his own. price is high or low, a great deal more, or He sometimes demands rent for what is al- very little more, or no more, than what is suftogether incapable of human improvements. ficient to pay those wages and profit, that it Kelp is a species of sea-weed, which, when affords a high rent, or a low rent, or no rent burnt, yields an alkaline salt, useful for mak-at all. ing glass, soap, and for several other purposes. The particular consideration, first, of those It grows in several parts of Great Britain, parts of the produce of land which always afparticularly in Scotland, upon such rocks only ford some rent; secondly, of those which someas lie within the high-water mark, which are times may and sometimes may not afford rent; twice every day covered with the sea, and of and, thirdly, of the variatious which, in the 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. 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. 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 PART I.-Of the Produce of Land which alto profit by the produce of the water, they ways affords Rent. must have a habitation upon the neighbouring land. The rent of the landlord is in propor- As men, like all other animals, naturally multion, not to what the farmer can make by the tiply in proportion to the means of their subland, but to what he can make both by the sistence, food is always more or less in deland and the water. It is partly paid in sea-mand. It can always purchase or command fish; and one of the very few instances in a greater or smaller quantity of labour, and which rent makes a part of the price of that somebody can always be found who is willing commodity, is to be found in that country. The rent of 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 the 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. 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 that 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. Sometling, therefore, always remains for a rent to the land. lord. There are some parts of the produce of land, The most desert moors in Norway and Scotfor which the demand must always be such as land produce suine sort of pasture for cattle, to afford a greater price than what is suffici- of which the milk and the increase are always ent to bring them to market; and there are more than sufficient, not only to maintain all others for which it either may or may not be the labour necessary for tending them, and to pay the ordinary profit to the farmer or the the best pasture of equal extent. Though its cultivation requires much more labour, yet the surplus which remains after replacing the seed and maintaining all that labour, is likewise much greater. If a pound of butcher's meat, therefore, was never supposed to be worth more than a pound of bread, this greater surplus would everywhere be of greater value, and constitute a greater fund, both for the profit of the farmer and the rent of the landlord. It seems to have done so universally in the rude beginnings of agriculture. The rent of land not only varies with its But the relative values of those two differfertility, whatever be its produce, but with its ent species of food, bread and butcher's meat, situation, whatever be its fertility. Land in are very different in the different periods of the neighbourhood of a town gives a greater agriculture. In its rude beginnings, the unrent than land equally fertile in a distant part improved wilds, which then occupy the far of the country. Though it may cost no more greater part of the country, are all abandoned labour to cultivate the one than the other, it to cattle. There is more butcher's meat than must always cost more to bring the produce bread; and bread, therefore, is the food for of the distant land to market. A greater which there is the greatest competition, and quantity of labour, therefore, must be main- which consequently brings the greatest price. tained out of it; and the surplus, from which At Buenos Ayres, we are told by Ulloa, four are drawn both the profit of the farmer and reals, one-and-twenty pence halfpenny sterling, the rent of the landlord, must be diminished. | was, forty or fifty years ago, the ordinary price But in remote parts of the country, the rate of an ox, chosen from a herd of two or three of profit, as has already been shewn, is gene- hundred. He says nothing of the price of rally higher than in the neighbourhood of a bread, probably because he found nothing relarge town. A smaller proportion of this di-markable about it. An ox there, he says, minished surplus, therefore, must belong to costs little more than the labour of catching the landlord. him. But corn can nowhere be raised with Ꭺ Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, out a great deal of labour; and in a country by diminishing the expense of carriage, put which lies upon the river Plate, at that time the remote parts of the country more nearly the direct road from Europe to the silver upon a level with those in the neighbourhood mines of Potosi, the money-price of labour of the town. They are upon that account the could be very cheap. It is otherwise whet greatest of all improvements. They encour- cultivation is extended over the greater part age the cultivation of the remote, which must of the country. There is then more bread than always be the most extensive circle of the butcher's meat. The competition changes its country. They are advantageous to the town direction, and the price of butcher's meat be by breaking down the monopoly of the coun- comes greater than the price of bread. try in its neighbourhood. They are advan- By the extension, besides, of cultivation tageous even to that part of the country. the unimproved wilds become insufficient to Though they introduce some rival commodi- supply the demand for butcher's meat. ties into the old market, they open many new great part of the cultivated lands must be emmarkets to its produce. Monopoly, besides, ployed in rearing and fattening cattle; of which is a great enemy to good management, which the price, therefore, must be sufficient to pay, can never be universally established, but in not only the labour necessary for tending them, consequence of that free and universal com- but the rent which the landlord, and the propetition which forces every body to have re-fit which the farmer, could have drawn from course to it for the sake of self-defence. It such land employed in tillage. The cattle is not more than fifty years ago, that some of bred upon the most uncultivated moors, when the counties in the neighbourhood of London brought to the same market, are, in proporpetitioned the parliament against the exten- tion to their weight or goodness, sold at the sion of the turnpike roads into the remoter same price as those which are reared upon the counties. Those remoter counties, they pretended, from the cheapness of labour, would be able to sell their grass and corn cheaper in the London market than themselves, and would thereby reduce their rents, and ruin their cultivation. Their rents, however, have risen, and their cultivation has been improved since that time. A corn field of moderate fertility produces a much greater quantity of food for man, than most improved land. The proprietors of those moors profit by it, and raise the rent of their land in proportion to the price of their cattle. It is not more than a century ago, that in many parts of the Highlands of Scotland, butcher's meat was as cheap or cheaper than even bread made of oatmeal. The Union opened the market of England to the Highland cattle. Their ordinary price, at present, is about three times greater than at the begin ning of the century, and the rents of many hood of Rome, must have been very much Highland estates have been tripled and quadrupled in the same time. In almost every part of Great Britain, a pound of the best butcher's meat is, in the present times, generally worth more than two pounds of the best white bread; and in plentiful years it is sometimes worth three or four pounds. discouraged by the distributions of corn which were frequently made to the people, either gratuitously, or at a very low price. This corn was brought from the conquered provinces, of which several, instead of taxes, were obliged to furnish a tenth part of their produce at a stated price, about sixpence a-peck, to the republic. The low price at which this corn was distributed to the people, must necessarily have sunk the price of what could be brought to the Roman market from Latium, or the ancient territory of Rome, and must have discouraged its cultivation in that country. It is thus that, in the progress of improvement, the rent and profit of unimproved pasture come to be regulated in some measure by the rent and profit of what is improved, and these again by the rent and profit of corn. Corn is an annual crop; butcher's meat, a crop which requires four or five years to grow. As an acre of land, therefore, will produce a much smaller quantity of the one species of food than of the other, the inferiority of the quantity must be compensated by the superiority of the price. If it was more than compen-nient for the maintenance of the cattle emsated, more corn-land would be turned into pasture; and if it was not compensated, part of what was in pasture would be brought back into corn. In an open country, too, of which the principal produce is corn, a well-inclosed piece of grass will frequently rent higher than any corn field in its neighbourhood. It is conve ployed in the cultivation of the corn; and its high rent is, in this case, not so properly paid from the value of its own produce, as from that of the corn lands which are cultivated by means of it. It is likely to fall, if ever the neighbouring lands are completely inclosed. The present high rent of inclosed land in Scotland seems owing to the scarcity of inclosure, and will probably last no longer than that scarcity. The advantage of inclosure is In greater for pasture than for corn. It saves the labour of guarding the cattle, which feed better, too, when they are not liable to be disturbed by their keeper or his dog. This equality, however, between the rent and profit of grass and those of corn; of the land of which the immediate produce is food for cattle, and of that of which the immediate produce is food for men, must be understood to take place only through the greater part of the improved lands of a great country. some particular local situations it is quite otherwise, and the rent and profit of grass are much superior to what can be made by corn. Thus, in the neighbourhood of a great town, the demand for milk, and for forage to horses, frequently contribute, together with the high price of butcher's meat, to raise the value of grass above what may be called its natural proportion to that of corn. This local advantage, it is evident, cannot be communicated to the lands at a distance. But where there is no local advantage of this kind, the rent and profit of corn, or whatever else is the common vegetable food of the people, must naturally regulate, upon the land which is fit for producing it, the rent and pro. fit of pasture. The use of the artificial grasses, of turnips, carrots, cabbages, and the other expedients which have been fallen upon to make an equal quantity of land feed a greater number of somewhat reduce, it might be expected, the superiority which, in an improved country, the price of butcher's meat naturally has over that of bread. It seems accordingly to have done so; and there is some reason for believing that, at least in the London market, the price of butcher's meat, in proportion to the price of bread, is a good deal lower in the present times than it was in the beginning of the last century. Particular circumstances have sometimes rendered some countries so populous, that the whole territory, like the lands in the neigh-cattle than when in natural grass, should bourhood of a great town, has not been sufficient to produce both the grass and the corn necessary for the subsistence of their inhabitants. Their lands, therefore, have been principally employed in the production of grass, the more bulky commodity, and which cannot be so easily brought from a great distance; and corn, the food of the great body of the people, has been chiefly imported from foreign | countries. Holland, is at present in this situation; and a considerable part of ancient In the Appendix to the life of Prince HenItaly seems to have been so during the prospe- ry, Doctor Birch has given us an account of rity of the Romans. To feed well, old Cato the prices of butcher's meat as commonly paid said, as we are told by Cicero, was the first by that prince. It is there said, that the four and most profitable thing in the management quarters of an ox, weighing six hundred of a private estate; to feed tolerably well, the pounds, usually cost him nine pounds ten second; and to feed ill, the third. To plough, shillings, or thereabouts; that is thirty-one he ranked only in the fourth place of profit shillings and eight-pence per hundred pounds and advantage. Tillage, indeed, in that part weight. Prince Henry died on the 6th of Noof ancient Italy which lay in the neighbour-vember 1612, in the nineteenth year of his age. In a hop garden, a fruit garden, a kitchen garden, both the rent of the landlord, and the profit of the farmer, are generally greater than in a corn or grass field. But to bring the In March 1764, there was a parliamentary sonable interest or compensation for this supeinquiry into the causes of the high price of rior expense. provisions at that time. It was then, among other proof to the same purpose, given in evidence by a Virginia merchant, that in Ma ch 1763, he had victualled his ships for twentyfour or twenty-five shillings the hundred ground into this condition requires more exweight of beef, which he considered as the or-pense. Hence a greater rent becomes due to dinary price; whereas, in that dear year, he the landlord. It requires, too, a more attenhad paid twenty-seven shillings for the same tive and skilful management. Hence a greatweight and sort. This high price in 1764 is, er profit becomes due to the farmer. The however, four shillings and eight-pence cheap- crop, too, at least in the hop and fruit garden, er than the ordinary price paid by Prince is more precarious. Its price, therefore, be. Henry; and it is the best beef only, it must sides compensating all occasional losses, must be observed, which is fit to be salted for those afford something like the profit of insurance. distant voyages. The circumstances of gardeners, generally The price paid by Prince Henry amounts mean, and always moderate, may satisfy us to 3d. 4-5ths per pound weight of the whole that their great ingenuity is not commonly carcase, coarse and choice pieces taken to- over-recompensed. Their delightful art is gether; and at that rate the choice pieces could not have been sold by retail for less than 4 d. or 5d. the pound. In the parliamentary inquiry in 1764, the witnesses stated the price of the choice pieces of the best beef to be to the consumer 4d. and 44d. the pound; and the coarse pieces in general to be from seven farthings to 2d. and 23d.; and this, they said, was in general one halfpenny dearer than the same sort of pieces had usually been sold in the month of March. But even this high price is still a good deal cheaper than what we can well suppose the ordinary retail price to have been in the time of Prince Henry. During the first twelve years of the last century, the average price of the best wheat at the Windsor market was L.1: 18: 3d. the quarter of nine Winchester bushels. But in the twelve years preceding 1764, including that year, the average price of the same measure of the best wheat at the same inarket was L.2 : 1 : 9Дd. practised by so many rich people for amusement, that little advantage is to be made by those who practise it for profit; because the persons who should naturally be their best customers, supply themselves with all their most precious productions. The advantage which the landlord derives from such improvements, seems at no time to have been greater than what was sufficient to compensate the original expense of making them. In the ancient husbandry, after the vineyard, a well-watered kitchen garden seems to have been the part of the farm which was supposed to yield the most valuable produce. But Democritus, who wrote upon husbandry about two thousand years ago, and who was regarded by the ancients as one of the fathers of the art, thought they did not act wisely who inclosed a kitchen garden. The profit, he said, would not compensate the expense of a stone-wall: and bricks (he meant, I suppose, bricks baked in the sun) mouldered with the rain and the winter-storm, and required continual repairs. Columella, who reports this judgment of Democritus, does not centrovert it, but proposes a very frugal method of inclosing with a hedge of brambles and briars, which he says he had found by experi. In all great countries, the greater part of ence to be both a lasting and an impenetrable the cultivated lands are employed in produc- fence; but which, it seems, was not cominoning either food for men or food for cattle. ly known in the time of Democritus. The rent and profit of these regulate the rent dius adopts the opinion of Columella, which and profit of all other cultivated land. If any had before been recommended by Varro. In particular produce afforded less, the land would the judgment of those ancient improvers, the soon be turned into corn or pasture; and if any afforded more, some part of the lands in corn or pasture would soon be turned to that produce. In the first twelve years of the last century, therefore, wheat appears to have been a good deal cheaper, and butcher's meat a good deal dearer, than in the twelve years preceding 1764, including that year. Palla produce of a kitchen garden had, it seems, been little more than sufficient to pay the extraordinary culture and the expense of water. ing; for in countries so near the sun, it was Those productions, indeed, which require thought proper, in those times as in the preeither a greater original expense of improve- sent, to have the command of a stream of wament, or a greater annual expense of cultiva. ter, which could be conducted to every bed in tion in order to fit the land for them, appear the garden. Through the greater part of Eucommonly to afford, the one a greater rent, rope, a kitchen garden is not at present supthe other a greater profit, than corn or pas-posed to deserve a better inclosure than that This superiority, however, will sel- recommended by Columella. In Great Bridom be found to amount to more than a rea-tain, and some other northern countries, the ture. |