Sect. 3. Increased BOOK I. extension is in no sense either the cause of such Chap. vii. a rise or essential to it. But still, in fact, the same increased productiveness of agricultural capital, which occasions a rise of rents on the old lands, of Capital. usually makes it possible to extend tillage to lands of inferior natural fertility, with as ample a return as that obtained from the old soils before the improvement took place. When the turnip husbandry was first adopted by the Norfolk farmers, it was found to increase the fertility of their lands so much, that farms, which before yielded a very small rent, now yielded one considerably larger. But another, and in a national point of view, a much more important result followed. There existed in England large tracts of light sandy soil, supposed to be wholly sterile, on which this new mode of husbandry was practicable, and when the produce of kindred soils, of somewhat better staple, yielded much more than the ordinary profits of stock, and paid considerable rents, it became possible to cultivate some of the more barren tracts without a loss. They were rapidly reclaimed from the waste, and the agriculture of England has since been gradually spreading itself over large districts of this description, which before yielded little or no human food, and contributed nothing to increase that mass of wages, profits, and rents, which compose jointly the resources of the country. Nor is this the only, though it is the most obvious manner, in which an increased efficiency of agricultural capital widens the agricultural resources of nations, at the same time that it is elevating Chap. vii. rents. Such an improvement usually leads to the Book 1. employment of a greater quantity of capital over the whole cultivated surface of the country. Increased Efficiency If the capital, which before yielded the ordinary rate of profit, say 10 per cent., now yields £120., of Capital. and pays a rent of £10., the farmer will often find that he can employ another portion of capital, say £100., which though it may not pay so much as his old capital now does, will still pay on some soils barely perhaps £110., the ordinary profits of stock; on others, perhaps, £111., £112., and £113., that is, something more on each than the usual rate of profit, though not so much as the old capital has been made to yield by the improved efficiency of its application. On these last soils, rents will then be rising from two causes; from the increased efficiency of the old capital, and from the unequal effects on soils of different degrees of fertility, of the new capital, which begins to accumulate on them. When an opportunity offers of thus gradually augmenting the capital which they can profitably employ on the old lands; the farmers of a prosperous country will slowly take advantage of it. For reasons hereafter to be explained, in countries where capital abounds, the owners of it are always impelled by self-interest to use the various additions which they employ, as much as possible, in the shape of auxiliary capital, and as little as they can help in the shape of wages of labor. The gradual increase of the relative quantity of auxiliary capital is, therefore, the ordinary effect of the pro ૨ Chap. vii. Sect. 3. Increased BOOK I. gressive increase of the whole mass of capital employed in agriculture. This is naturally followed, for the reasons we have stated, by a progressive increase of the efficiency of human industry; and of Capital. in this manner, the means are gradually developed, of contending successfully with soils of a low degree of native fertility, and of obtaining, without a diminution of agricultural power, the supplies for an increasing population. As the cultivated territory thus widens, large quantities of capital accumulate both upon the old soils and upon the successive additions to the tilled ground, and the resources of a nation to maintain a numerous population are at once multiplied and extended. Although then the immediate addition to the national wealth, which is indicated by a rise of rents from the increased efficiency of the capital employed, is limited to the amount of the increased rent itself: yet the spread of tillage to inferior soils, and the increase of capital on the old soils, which usually follow such a rise, produce an additional extension of the resources of a people, which is of very great importance to the welfare and strength of every increasing community. We have seen, that a spread of tillage to inferior soils is by no means essential to the rise of rents, which takes place when agricultural capital becomes more efficient. But the establishment of this fact, does not disclose all the errors of those who have thought and taught that "Rent depends "exclusively on the extension of tillage: that it "is high where tillage is widely extended over in 1 Book I. Chap. vii. Sect. 3. Efficiency "ferior lands, and low where it is confined to the "superior descriptions only." Whenever a rise of rents takes place from the increased demand for agricultural produce, the spread of tillage to in- Increased ferior soils presents the practical limit to that rise. of Capital. It is clear, that if, as population increased, all fresh supplies were necessarily extracted from the old soils alone, there would be no assignable limit to the increase of the relative value of raw produce, of the surplus profits made on the land, or of rents. But while additional quantities of produce can be obtained from inferior gradations of soils, the price of raw produce will never exceed the cost of procuring it from the lowest gradation which it is found expedient to cultivate: and if from the increasing efficiency of agricultural capital, the cost of getting produce from that gradation is not greater than it was on the old soils before the improvement, the price of raw produce will not rise at all. The inferior soils, therefore, though their culture is not essential to a rise of rents, present always a boundary to that rise. Their existence is a protection to the interests of the consumers without interfering with those of the landed proprietors. They prevent corn being sold at a monopoly price, and cut off the increased rents which such a price creates; without interfering with the beneficial increase of the revenues of the landed proprietors, which flows either from the souree we are examining, the better application of capital, or from that we have before 1 Macculloch, p. 282, Book I. examined, the increased quantity of capital em- Increased Improvements, therefore, in the efficiency of the Efficiency capital employed in cultivation, raise rents, by inof Capital. creasing the surplus profits realized on particular spots of land. They invariably produce this increase of surplus profits, unless they augment the mass of raw produce so rapidly as to outstrip the progress of demand; an event of rare occurrence. Such improvements in the efficiency of the capital employed, do usually occur in the progress of agricultural skill, and of the accumulation of greater masses of auxiliary capital. A rise of rents from this cause, is generally followed by the spread of tillage to inferior soils, without any diminution in the returns to agricultural capital on the worst spots reclaimed. This spread of tillage must not, however, be confounded with the causes of the rise of rents on the old soils, with the origin of which rise it is wholly unconnected, while it serves in its consequences to moderate and limit those augmented rents. Book I. Chap. vii. Sect. 4. Increase of SECTION IV. On the third Source of the Increase of Farmers' Rents, namely, a Decrease in the Share of the producing Classes, the Produce remaining the same. A RISE in the relative value of raw produce, (the cost of producing other commodities remain |
