Chap. vii. Sect. 8. Position of BOOK I. the general question of the corn-laws; and through that question, on the harmony of the agricultural and non-agricultural classes, and on the uninterEngland. rupted perception by both of them, of their common and inseparable interests. To return then more distinctly and exclusively to this point of view. If we suppose the tithes commuted, and the poor-rates done away with, or reduced to a very small sum, then the farmer, in estimating his peculiar burthens, would be relieved from a feeling of indefinite pressure, and from many vague fears of risk and loss, which are kept alive and irritated by the existence of those payments in their present state. This effected, a scale of duties might probably be devised, which should be both fixed and moderate. Till this is done, it is very much to be feared that no corn-laws, which are really equitable, will ever appear to the farmer to give him sufficient protection: while the non-agricultural classes will be but too easily persuaded, that they add exorbitantly and unjustly to the price of provisions. The ceaseless collision of such opinions will necessarily keep on foot hostile and angry feelings, and be destructive of that confidence and frank co-operation between the different orders and classes of the community, without which, in times of peril, and even in times of peace, a state is shorn of more than half its strength. But a fixed and moderate duty permanently established', and angry feelings on the one side, and 1 1 It will again be remembered, that I consider the commutation of tithes, and change of poor-laws, essential preli minaries gra new exaggerated fears of change on the other, finally quelled, the farmer might once more begin dually to accumulate, and gradually to find modes of employing fresh quantities of capital. The consequences of a diffused and skilful employment of such fresh farming capital, have already been pointed out. England offers still a large field for agricultural enterprize and improvements. The best methods of cultivation already known, extend to no great proportion of her surface; and when these have been generally diffused, the career of the cultivators may still be for ages progressive. Superior as the English agriculture is, there are many indications that it is still only approaching, that it is far from having reached, the term of its power. The introduction of mechanical or chemical forces which will displace much of the animal power now used; the discovery of fresh and more prolific grasses and vegetables to be cultivated by the plough or spade; the gradual breaking up of much of the ground over which cattle now roam; the raising a greater proportion of the 'more valuable crops, which contribute directly or indirectly to human subsistence; and a general advance in the efficiency of the many aids to human labor used by the husbandman;— these are all improvements, the gradual establishment of which it is so far from extravagant to BOOK I. Chap. vii. Sect. 8. Position of minaries to this measure. No allowance in the rate of duty for those payments, as they are at present assessed, will, I fear, ever produce any thing but dissatisfaction in any class. BOOK I. expect, that it is perhaps more like extravagance to doubt that many of them are close at hand. Chap. vii. Position of One effect of such new power gained by agriEngland. culture, will unquestionably be the reclaiming and gradually fertilizing a considerable portion of the large part of the soil of the country which is now unproductive: and while the grappling with the wild land, and the multiplication of means and power on the old, are going on, we may, judging of the future from the past, rationally hope that the power of agriculture will be increasing, and that the population of the country will be maintained by the exertions of a diminished proportion of its laborious hands. It has been already pointed out, it is hoped with sufficient clearness, that during such a progress, the mass of rents must be constantly increasing. In a country cultivated by farmers, with every forward movement of the people in numbers, wealth, knowledge and skill, the landed body, borne up by the swelling wave, will be lifted to a station in which their means and influence will be adapted to the fresh position of the population. The causes of this advancement are deeply seated in the physical constitution of the earth. The funds which support it are injurious to no class: they cannot be destroyed or lessened: their existence and increase are secured by the same unfailing laws which regulate those unequal returns, which the varied surface of the earth must ever make to the labors bestowed upon it. The enduring interests of the landed proprietors are thus indissolubly bound up and connected with the means, the enterprize, and the Chap. vii. England. success of the agricultural capitalists. Temporary Book I. advantages in their bargains with their tenantry, S. 8. or in their arrangements with the state, are to them objects necessarily of inferior, sometimes of only Position of illusory benefit. The fortunes, the station, the comparative influence and means of their order, are always therefore best guarded and preserved by them, when, keeping aloof from all that may embroil or hinder the general progress of the nation in wealth and skill, they use their individual influence, and their political functions, to promote such systems only of national policy and finance as are just and moderate; likely, therefore, to be steady and durable, and to leave a free course to those wholesome causes which promote their own peculiar interests, only as identified with those of the nation. Conclusion. The task of observing the revenues annually derived from the soil by its owners, is finished. We have marked the laws which determine the amount of rents under all their many forms and characters. We have traced them to their origin, in the early appropriation of the soil; in its power to yield more to the rudest efforts of man than the bare sustenance of its cultivators; and in the necessity which, in the infancy of agricultural communities, binds the peasant to the task of tilling the earth, because it is thus only that he can earn the food on which he is to exist. We have followed them afterwards to those more limited spots, Chap. vii. Sect. 8. BOOK I. in which an advance in the state of society, and 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 |