RENT, AND THE EFFECT A CORN-LAW HAS UPON IT.

THERE are various ways by which rents may be raised. Rents may be raised in consequence of the increased prosperity of the whole country. A growing population requires more food, more clothes, more houses, as it increases in numbers. A population growing in wealth as well as numbers causes the demand for these accommodations to advance in a more rapid ratio. As the populousness and wealth of a country rise still higher, more clothes, more food, more houses, are required ; and higher prices are offered for them. More land is required to produce food, or the raw materials for clothes ; more land is required to build dwellings upon, or improvements are made in agriculture by means of which the same land is brought to yield greater returns to the same outlay of capital and labour. Either way, rents are raised. More rent is paid for land whereon to build houses, in proportion as more houses are built, and as men becoming more wealthy and luxurious require greater space for more roomy houses and for gardens and pleasuregrounds attached to them. In proportion as more land is brought into tillage, greater inequality in its productive powers is found to exist, in consequence of greater differences in their distance from markets and supply of manure, their natural fertility, and other circumstances. The produce of the least fertile lands, and of those the produce of which is conveyed to market at the greatest coat, must yield a sum sufficient to pay the wages of the labourers employed, and yield the cultivator the average profits upon capital prevailing in the country : consequently all that the more fertile soils yield over and above that is rent. But improvements in agricultural skill, increasing the gross produce of agriculture likewise increase rent. At first, the whole of the increase is ;hared between capitalists and labourers, in the shape of higher profits and higher wages : but before long, the increase of labourers arising from higher wages brings wages down to the old level, and the increase of capital arising from profits brings profits down to the old level by the competition of capitalists. And as soon as this happens, the whole of the increase of produce arising from improved skill falls to the owners of land in the shape of higher rent.

But rents may also increase (for a time at least) in consequence, tot of the prosperity, but of the depression of a class or classes of society.

When the mass of a people can be brought, as has been done in Ireland, to live upon potatoes, in wretched hovels, and to wear rags, their competition for small patches of ground, driving them to

offer to the landlord the whole surplus produce of their industry over and above the wretched pittance necessary to support them, raises rent. Something analogous, though not to the same extent, has taken place in England. The condition of English farmers has

of late years been much altered for the worse. The farmers complain-that they pay rent out of their capital, and that many of them

are ruined every year. And yet the competition for farms, often at an increased rent, is as keen as ever it was. Farmers are a race who find great difficulty in changing their hereditary employment. Rather than betake themselves to some other occupation, they are contented to go on deriving less and less profit ; and as their numbers increase, sacrificing a forger portion of the returns of the soil in order to retain their farms. The increased numbers of an agricultural population, submitting to be reduced to a lower standard of living, may enable the landlord to exact a greater surplus for rent than he could when that class was in flourishing circumstances. Again, a fall of wages, by diminishing the cost of production, may leave the farmer a larger surplus of profit out of which to pay to the landlord a higher rent without pinching himself.. If the la bourers can be brought to be satisfied with a lower standard of living, the effect upon surplus-produce will be, to a certain extent, the same as when all the occupiers of the soil have been brought to

submit to a lower standard of living. "The rent of English farms," says an acute annotator of the Wealth of Nations,* "when measured

in agricultural produce, has lately been rising while wages were falling. In the Southern counties of England too, the cost of production has been artificially diminished by means of paying the wages of farm-labourers out of a general rate. This notable scheme must for a time have had the effect of augmenting the surplus portion of produce, and therefore the value of the land; though it has ended in imposing a tax on the land, which at present more than outweighs any advantage ever derived by the landlord from the payment, in part, by classes who did not employ them, of the wages of farm-labourers.' Since this remark was published, the new

Poor-law has materially diminished the pressure of this tax upon land ; but have the wages of farm-labourers been raised in proportion ? There is truth in the sarcastic remark of the author we have quoted—" Rent, says the Ricardo theory, consists of surplus. There are more ways than one, however, by which surplus may be increased."

It appears from these considerations, that increased rents may be the consequence either of general prosperity in a nation or of the depressed condition of certain classes. There is this difference, however, between the two cases. The first is not invidious : when the landowner but shares the common prosperity, no one grudges his advantage. In the other case, his increasing wealth amid growing poverty exposes him to ill-will, that may be danger ous. It is also worth while to inquire, whether the increase of rent is equally certain and permanent when proceeding from the first cause as when it arises from the second.

There are limits to the power of squeezing more rent out of a population satisfied with a lower rate of living. The work of an

under-fed labourer is neither so continuous nor so productive while it lasts as the work of a well-fed labourer. Its cheapness is more apparent than real. The farmer, therefore, who by employing the nominally cheaper labour thinks to obtain larger returns on his ca

pital, finds himself deceived. The higher rent, which his fallacious calculation has encouraged him to offer to his landlord, must be

scraped together at the expense of privations in his own house

hold. He is reduced himself to the condition of those cultivators of the soil who must pay their rent out of their capital, or submit to a lower standard of living. With such a class of tenants, the pay ment of the landlord's rents become less certain. The defalcations of tenants, the expense of legal processes for recovering outstand

ing arrears, and many similar deficits, must fall to be deducted from his nominal rental. The increase of rent obtained by reducing cultivators and labourers to a lower standard of living is not permanent; and as the experience of Ireland can tell, it may, if carried beyond a certain pitch, be unsafe. On the other hand, the increase of rent occasioned by the general prosperity of a country is inevitable so long as that prosperity lasts. The more people there are in a country capable of paying for what they wish, the more sure are the gains of the landowner. More food, greater varieties of food, more houses, more spacious houses, more and more extensive pleasure-grounds, are required. And as land for all these purposes comes more and more into request, his rent goes on increasing. The high rent paid for land in a wide circle round London, Birmingham, Manchester, and other populous and wealthy towns, has long been a subject of remark. In proportion as these centres of industry and wealth are scattered over a country, does the number of these circles of high-priced land in

crease. In proportion as the facility and economy of carriage is increased by roads, canals, railroads, and the application of steam

or other mechanical powers to locomotion, do these circles extend their radius. And in proportion as these centres of wealth 'and industry are linked to each other by increased facilities of communi

cation, is the advantage derived from a close proximity to towns more equally diffused over a whole country. Whatever, therefore, tends to increase the diffusion of populous and wealthy towns over the whole surface of a country, tends to promote the Improvement • Mr. KNIGHT'S edition, with Notes by the Author of "England sad America." of agriculture, and with it the increase of rents. But the continuance of this prosperity of landlords and farmers is dependent upon

the continuance of that prosperity which first called it into being.

As soon as the towns which by their demand gave a stimulus to increased agricultural production, and by their wealth supplied the means of effecting it, become stationary or retrograde, the agricultural interest dependent upon them for a market must share the same fate.

Let us now apply these views as a test to the ability of a restrictive corn-law to promote the interests of agriculturists. A striking illustration of the tendency of increased mercantile and manufacturing wealth to promote the cultivation of land and

increase its value has been stated by Colonel TORRENS.t " The

moors of Lancashire could not originally have been made to grow corn, because the quantity of corn consumed by the labourers reclaiming and cultivating them would have exceeded the quantity 'which they were capable of producing. But cheap corn was brought from Ireland and other places; increasing wealth and population created an intense and extensive demand for those agricultural luxuries which, not entering into the subsistence of farm-labourers, are not expended in reproducing themselves ; and the consequence has been, that what was the barren moor now bears crops of great value, and pays higher rents than the most fertile corn-lands of England."

It will readily be admitted, that the proprietors of the Lancashire moors would not have been benefited by a law prohibiting the im portation into that county of corn grown in any other. It is be cause they could get cheaper corn elsewhere than they could grow themselves, that they have been able to raise the value of their lands. Had they not been able to procure that cheap corn, the process would have been checked at the outset. The cheaper the manufacturing staples of Lancashire got their corn, the better it was for the landowners around them. " This," say the advocates

of a corn-law, "is true with regard to land near populous and wealthy towns ; but the owners of land which lies at a distance

need protection. There must be a law to oblige the manufacturers

to take the cheap corn they require from them and not from foreigners." But what if they cannot supply the corn cheap

enough ? The price of corn in the market is composed of the cost

of production and the expense of carriage : if the British lands are sufficiently fertile and the carriage from them to the manufacturing

towns sufficiently cheap to serve the purpose, no protection is needed : if they are not, the prohibition to import foreign corn will prevent the manufacturers getting the corn at the necessary cheap ness, and will deprive the lands in their vicinity of the advantage they would derive from the expansion of trade, and will leave the more distant lands exactly where they were. It is possible that the landowners near the town may be benefited without those more remote participating in the advantage ; but those at a distance cannot be benefited unless those near at hand are so in the first in stance. Canals, railroads the establishment of manufactures to meet the increasing demand in places where they have not existed previously, are the means by which the increased value of land is

to be diffused over the country : but these are the consequences of the accumulation of wealth at first in the most favoured localities. The landowners most disadvantageously situated must wait their time : they cannot invert the order of nature.

The notion that by means of a corn-law, excluding foreign competition, all the landowners of a country may at once be made to participate in the advantages enjoyed by those in the immediate vicinity of populous seats of industry, is a mistake of the same kind made by those trades-unionists who proposed to have one uni form rate of wages for all workmen. Those mistaken men, had they succeeded in obliging their masters to pay the efficient and the inefficient workman at the same rate, could only have rendered him incapable of carrying on his business, and of employing any of them. The landowners, who insist upon the manufacturing-towns taking their supplies of corn from them even though they cannot furnish it at that cheap rate necessary to cause the value of land around the town to rise, can only drive the manufacturer out of the market of the world by doing so. They are committing the very same blunder in their own case for which they lecture and scold the operatives. By being in too great a hurry to gather the fruits of the general increase of the country's wealth, they may effectually prevent that wealth from ever increasing to such an amount as can benefit them. That is all a corn-law can do for them. They must, therefore, if they are determined that the manufacturers shall not have their cheap corn from abroad, be contented to see their rentals first remain stationary, and then decline. By forcing farmers and labourers to adopt a lower standard of living—if that be possible with the latter class—they may postpone the evil day for themselves; but it will certainly overtake them at last.

The present seems an auspicious moment for inviting the attention of the agriculturists to reflections like these. Mr. CHRISTOPHER says, they have promised the Queen to inquire into the ope

ration of the Corn-laws ; and surely they will not be so disloyal subjects (or so regardless of their own interest) as to laugh in their

sleeves at her Majesty, and institute a mere sham inquiry. In the remarks offered above, attention has been exclusively directed to the external phgenornena of the rise and fall of rents. Some additional light may be thrown upon the question by a short popular explanation of the rationale of rent—of the source whence it flows, its real nature, and the laws which regulate its rise and fall. But that explanation must be reserved for next week.

t "Colonization of South Australia," page 280.