Sect. 8. BOOK I. in which an advance in the state of society, and Chap. vii. the introduction of a body of agricultural capitalists, (not necessarily dependent on the soil for subsistConclusion. ence,) have limited rents to those surplus profits, which can be realized on particular spots of ground. Perhaps this is the place to notice an attempt, which it has been suggested to me may still be made, to reduce all rents to rents of this last description. Those, it has been said, who maintain that rents always consist in unequal returns to equal portions of capital, and in such unequal returns alone, may still refuse to admit, that the history which has been given of the nature and origin of peasants' rents, is any refutation of their narrow system. I should not have anticipated such an attempt: but I can conceive it possible. There often exists unquestionably among the labor or produce rents paid by every class of peasant tenantry, a portion of the payment, which may be traced to the superior quality of some parts of the soil. The landlord of a serf peasantry gets more labor from the same space when the land is good, than he does when it is bad. The landlord of ryots, metayers, or cottiers, finds his produce or money rents greater on the good soils, than on the inferior. We have already seen, however, that such a difference has nothing to do with the origin, or with the form of such rents, and exists as a quantity unknown or unobserved by those who pay, or those who receive them, amidst the action of the causes which have been pointed out as practically determining their variations. There is one very Chap. vii. Sect. 8. Conclusion. limited and peculiar form of society, in which this Book I. difference does afford a correct measure of the rents paid by the agricultural capitalists, who constitute the body of the tenantry. But, out of the peculiar rents paid in these limited districts, first to form a narrow definition of the word rent, and then to attempt forcibly to include under this word, the payments made by the tillers of the earth over the whole of its surface, is to attempt to make the realities of things bend and circumscribe themselves within the more manageable but arbitrary compass to which we may wish to confine our reasonings: it is to abandon the task of observation by which our knowledge should be earnt, that we may create an unreal foundation for systems, which, as far as they profess to be general, must necessarily be visionary and false; which can be serviceable only in the work of amusing ourselves and deluding others; and must end in leaving us ignorant of the origin, progress, and effects, of the relations between landlord and tenant, over ninety-nine parts in a hundred of the cultivated globe. I need not, I hope, press this point farther. The whole of these pages present the proper answer to such an attempt. They have effected little, if they have not shewn, that it is by no such puerile efforts to make reasoning supply the place of knowledge, that we can gather practical wisdom from enquiries into the economical condition of the great family of mankind. The existence of the revenue which is derived from lands forms, in the very dawn of civiliza BOOK I. tion, the most important element of its progress. It is the fund from which communities derive Chap. vii. Sect. 8. their ornaments and their strength. It supplies Conclusion. states with leaders in war, and rulers in peace; gives birth to the useful and the elegant arts; and yields, directly or indirectly, those means and opportunities of leisure, which are the parents of literature, and of all accumulated and transmitted knowledge. If the existence and general progress of rents is identical with the extent and growth of the sources of civilization, their peculiar forms exercise a no less dominant influence on all the most important distinguishing characteristics of nations, and of classes of nations. Nor is this the case only in the infancy of communities; we have already seen, that with the exception of our country, and of one or two others, all, even the leading people of the earth, are still agricultural ; that is, by far the largest portion of their industrious population is employed in agriculture; and we have too, good reason to believe, that their condition in this respect will change slowly, where it changes at all. But among nations so situated, (forming the majority of the inhabitants of the world) so it is, and ever must be, that the productive powers of their population, their joint wealth and strength, the elements of most of their political institutions, and of many of their moral characteristics, can only be understood and weighed, after a thorough investigation into the habits, the ties, the relations, the revenues, to which the oc cupation of the land they exist on has and which it continues to maintain. given birth, Book I. It is from Sect. 8. such an investigation alone therefore, that we must acquire the power of estimating the actual condi- Conclusion. tion, or of judging of the future prospects, of the majority of our fellow men. Of the great leading divisions, which separate the agricultural nations of the earth into distinct masses, I have attempted to draw a distinct outline. There are, however, probably, within the limits of each division, instances of exceptions and modifications, which may have escaped my notice, and which exercise some influence over the circumstances and institutions of individual communities. If I should succeed in directing the attention of others to the points which I have pointed out as important in the tenures and habits of agricultural nations, some account of those modifications will probably be hereafter supplied. In the mean time, as I am conscious that the wide outline I have drawn, and such details as I have introduced, are faithful and impartial, I cannot and do not doubt, that the progressive supply of detailed information, will confirm the principles which I have pointed out, while it may probably modify and correct, to some extent, their local application. The rents paid by the smallest, but to us the most interesting class of tenantry, agricultural capitalists, or farmers, I have treated with Mr. Malthus and others, simply as surplus profits. The view, however, taken here of the different modes by which these surplus profits may increase BOOK I. and accumulate on the soil, is, I believe, new. Chap. vii. Certainly it is cheering, and strips away at once all that was harsh and repulsive, in the false aspect lately so laboriously given to the causes and sources of increase in this class of rents. Conclusion. During the progress of the whole subject, abstracting from all difference in the forms of rents, and in the character and the relations between the cultivators and proprietors, one great truth has been placed, it is hoped, on the secure foundation of a patient and copious induction. I have had pleasure in introducing the evidence of it wherever it has occurred, and I shall conclude with it. In no one position of society, during no one period of the progress of civilization, do the real interests of the proprietors of the soil cease to be identical with those of the cultivators, and of the community to which they both belong. But even this truth itself, if the views which I have, with some labor, arrived at, do not deceive me, will, in the future progress of our subject, appear to be included in one yet more cheering, because more comprehensive; namely, that all systems are essentially false and delusive, which suppose that the permanent gain and advantage of any one class of the community, can be founded on the loss of another class: because the same providence which has knit together the affections and sympathies of mankind, by so many common principles of action, and sources of happiness, has, in perfect consistency with its own purposes, so arranged the economical laws which determine the social condition |