I hope I have now given a solution of the Problem: How it has come to pass, that while rents have increased in England, therent has become a smaller fraction of the produce.It is demonstrable, as you have seen, that this cannot arise from the causeasserted by Mr Ricardo and Mr McCulloch to be the sole and universal source of an increase of rents.
But it may be asked, how did the proposition which I am combatingthat the increase of rent arises universally from theextension of cultivation to inferior soils, or to the same soil with inferior returnsobtain such a hold on the minds of eminentPolitical Economists?
To this I reply, that this happens because this proposition was an ingenious deduction from the doctrine of rent.on a certainhypothesis; namely on the hypothesis of a constantly decreasing return to agricultural labour; and in consequence of theingenuity of the deduction, the doctrine and the hypothesis were accepted as proving each other.
The doctrine of rent, that rent is the excess of the produce of good soils over the worst soils, or over the worst remuneratedcapital, was received, as we have seen, with great admiration.The hypothesis, that successive equal doses of labour or ofcapital produce diminishing results, was accepted as most simple.Perhaps it was suggested by a vague notion of the effectof labour employed in digging the soil.If the produce of a given field be increased by one man's digging over the soil, it mayperhaps be further increased by two men who may pulverize the soil still further: but it is not likely that the second man'slabour will produce an addition equal to the first.
But there seems to be no reason whatever to suppose that this is the rule of the general ease.Additional labour, andadditional capital, may be employed upon land, and the result may be no additional produce.But also additional labour andadditional capital, in other ways, may be employed so as to give additional produce to an extent of which we cannotprescribe the limits beforehand.The great point in such cases is to discover how this may be done.The result depends uponagricultural skill and inventiveness, and may be great or may be small.Though the law of decreasing productiveness toadditional labour and capital had been laid down with great confidence, there seems to be no ground for asserting it as a lawof the progress of agriculture.The great improvements in agriculture, improved machines, manures, drainage, do not appearto have followed this law.The improvements in agriculture have not consisted in trying more and more to squeeze from agiven plot of ground the utmost crop that it can produce of one kind, but in introducing new kinds of food for animals, asturnips into the sandy soils of Norfolk, and artificial grasses of all kinds, and in making one part of the farm play into thehands of another, so as to feed an increased number of cattle, and yet to have an increased breadth of cereal crops.Therehave been improvements too in all agricultural machinery: new manures: new and improved modes of draining: and manyother improvements.In these ways the produce of the land has been increased, and additional capital has been employedupon it: but there is no ground whatever for saying that each additional equal dose of capital so applied has producedsmaller results.
To make improvements in agriculture must depend, as I have said, upon inventive skill and it is the skill which has beenbrought out in this pursuit in England which has been the cause of the agricultural progress of England; and this has been thereward of the care, study, and enterprize bestowed upon the subject.That this, and not the decreasing fertility of soils, is thecause of the increase of rents in England, is shown, as I have said, by the fact that the rent though greater absolutely, is a lessfraction of the whole produce.
Proportion of agricultural and non-agricultural Population.
Besides the proportion which rent bears to produce, there is another large fact in the condition of England, which proves, inthe most conclusive manner, that the course of events by which England has come into its present condition, has been anincrease in the productive powers of its agriculture, such as has placed it in advance of other countries: in advance ofFrance, and of other countries probably still more.
This fact is, the proportion of the non-agricultural to the agricultural population.In England the non-agriculturists aredouble the number of the agriculturists.In England, cultivators of the soil produce sustenance for 8 besides themselves; thatis, for 12 persons altogether.
But in France before the Revolution, the cultivators were to the non-cultivators as 4 to 1: that is, 4 cultivators producedsustenance for 5 persons.
Perhaps now in France the cultivators arc to the whole population as 2 to 3.Hence 4 cultivators produce sustenance for 6persons.Thus the productive powers of the agricultural population are in England double of what they are in France.
What is the manner of the increase of the nonagricultural classes? Plainly the employment of Auxiliary Capital brings manyof them into being.The Auxiliary Capital is employed in supporting those who are not directly engaged in agriculture, but inother ways auxiliary to agriculture: for instance, the machine-maker, who makes ploughs and carts, and now, thrashing andwinnowing machines worked by steam-engines:the brick-maker who makes draining tiles: the sailor who brings guanofrom afar :and many others.It is reckoned, as I have said, that (Jones, p.232) the agriculturists, in using the results of suchauxiliaries, employ 4 times as much capital as they expend in wages.
