for the institution. It is one which applies to all the products of human industry-a category comprising (with some unimportant exceptions) movable wealth in every form, as well as some forms of immovable wealth, but which obviously can have no application to a commodity which "no man has made." It has been urged, indeed, that this reasoning is not rigorous, and that strict logic would require us to extend the description given of land to every form of wealth, movable as well as immovable, elaborated by the hand of industry or still lying crude in the earth, since, in the last resort, all is traceable alike to materials furnished by nature-which "no man has made." But this is to fall into the error of the Physiocrates, and to confound wealth with matter. The street and palace, the corn and cotton, the goods that fill our warehouses, whatever be the form imparted to them by industry, all, no doubt, derive their material existence in the last resort from things which no man has made; no man has made the matter of which they are composed; but, as wealth, as things possessing exchange value, they exist, not through the liberality of nature, but through the labour and enterprise of man. According to the economic formula their value (omitting the, in most instances, infinitesimal portion of it which covers rent) corresponds to their cost of production. It is not so with land, which possesses value, and often high value, even in its crudest form; with respect to which, therefore, whatever other reasons may be urged in favour of giving it up to private ownership, that reason cannot be urged which applies to the mass of the other objects of wealth—namely, that this mode of proceeding forms the natural and most effective means of encouraging industry useful to man.

It will be said, however, that the fact in question is after all pertinent to the controversy only while land remains in a state of nature, and that my argument ceases to have practical force as soon as the soil of a country has been brought under cultivation and is improved by industry. This exception, I admit, is to a certain extent well founded-only let us carefully note to what extent. Of the labour employed on land, all that is directed to the raising of the immediate produce, and of which the results are realised in this. produce—that is to say, the great bulk of all the labour applied to the land of a country-finds its natural remuneration in these results, in this immediate produce. Such labour, recompensed as it is by the immediate returns, and leaving the soil substantially as it found it, cannot form a ground for rights of property in the soil itself. No more can labour employed, not upon the cultivated soil at all, but in extrinsic operations-in making roads, bridges, harbours, in building towns, and in general in doing things which, directly or indirectly, facilitate the disposal of agricultural produce. It is very true indeed that labour thus employed affects the value of land; and

there are writers who have relied upon this fact, as identifying in principle landed with other property, showing as it does a connexion between the value of land and labour expended. Unfortunately for the analogy they seek to establish, the labour that is expended is expended, not upon the land whose value it affects, but upon other things; and the property which results, accrues, not to those who exert or employ the labour, but to other persons. The fact, instead of making good the analogy, brings into sharp contrast the things compared. A bale of cloth, a machine, a house, owes its value to the labour expended upon it, and belongs to the person who expends or employs the labour: a piece of land owes its value-so far as its value is affected by the causes I am now considering-not to the labour expended upon it, but to that expended upon something else to the labour expended in making a railroad, or in building houses in an adjoining town; and the value thus added to the land belongs, not to the persons who have made the railway or built the houses, but to some one who may not even be aware that these operations are being carried on-nay, who perhaps has exerted all his efforts to prevent their being carried on. How many landlords have had their rent-rolls doubled by railways made in their despite ? In considering the above exception, therefore, we must put aside as irrelevant to the question all the industry expended upon land, of which the effects are limited to the immediate crop, as well as all that employed in the general material development of the country, apart from the cultivation of the soil; and we thus narrow the argument to the effects of the labour directed to the permanent improvement of the cultivated soil itself, to rendering this a more efficient instrument for productive purposes than nature gave it to us. So far as this has been done; so far as the productive qualities of the soil have been permanently improved; so far, undoubtedly, the value added to the soil by such operations, and property in this value, when it vests in the producer, rests economically upon the same foundation as property in corn, or wine, or houses. The transformation of the Lincolnshire fens and the lagoons of Holland into tracts of golden wheat land has been referred to by Lord Dufferin: the reclamation of bog and hill-side by Irish peasant occupiers, equally illustrates the principle; and the mention of this last instance will at once indicate what a very short way the analogy in question will carry those who have urged it towards the goal they seek. On the assumption that property in land were measured by the value added to land by human labour to land as distinct from its products-and that this property vested in the person who created the value, landed property would, thus conditioned, be assimilated in principle to property in other things. As matters actually stand, I need scarcely say none of these conditions is fulfilled. Property in land is not measured by the

value which industry has added to the land, but is co-extensive with the whole value of the commodity, from whatever causes arising; while the property in such results as human labour has fixed in the soil, does not pass to him whose exertions have produced them, but to him who happens at the moment to be legal owner of the improved ground. The fact, in short, does not advance us a step towards the required assimilation: it merely shows us this, that there is a portion of landed property which man has made, which is strictly the produce of human industry; which, therefore, would rest on the same footing as property in other industrial products, were only the laws of landed property something wholly different from what they are.

It follows then that the distinction drawn between property in land and property in other things, founded on the fact that "no man made the land," by no means terminates (as might at first be supposed) with land in a state of nature: unless so far as the existing value of land is due altogether to the industry expended upon itunless in such rare instances as the lagoons of Holland or the fens of Lincolnshire, or reclamations of waste land previously valueless -the distinction applies equally to all lands, cultivated or wild. Property in cultivated, no less than in wild land, consists largely in value which no human industry employed upon the land has created. The ordinary economic considerations, therefore, which apply to, and justify property in other forms of wealth, do not apply here. There may be good reasons for the institution of landed property-on that I am not for the moment concerned to express an opinion-but they are not the reasons which support the institution in its other forms; in particular, landed property is wanting in that foundation-in the judgment of most people, I apprehend, the strongest of all those on which property rests-the expediency of securing the labourer in the fruit of his toil.

The argument, as thus far conducted, carries me, I admit, no further than to this negative conclusion. It rebuts an à priori objection to legislative action in such cases as Ireland presents, founded upon an assumed analogy between land and other forms of wealth. To exhibit the positive reasons which explain and vindicate a policy in the direction contemplated we must go a step further, and bring into view the causes which determine the existence and growth of agricultural rent, and, in relation to these causes, the position occupied by the owners of land on the one hand, and by the general community on the other.

The phenomenon of agricultural rent, let me briefly explain, is, economically considered, of this nature:-it consists of the existence in agricultural returns of a value over and above what is sufficient to replace the capital employed in agriculture with the profit customary in the country. This surplus value arises in this way. The qualities

of different soils being different, and the capital applied even to an area of uniform fertility not being all equally productive-farms differing besides in respect of their situation, proximity to market, and other circumstances-it happens that agricultural produce is raised at varying costs; but it is evident that when brought to common markets it will, quality for quality, command the same price. Hence arises, or rather hence would arise in the absence of rent, a vast difference in the profits upon agricultural industry. The produce raised on the best soils, or under other circumstances of exceptional advantage, would bear a much larger proportion to the outlay than that raised under less favourable circumstances; but, as it is clear that, in a community where people engage in agriculture with a view to profit, even this latter portion would need to carry such a price as would give the producer the same profits which he might obtain in other occupations (for otherwise he would not engage in its production), it follows that all the produce except this, sold as it is, quality for quality, at the same price, must yield a profit over and above the customary profit of the country. This surplus profit is known to political economists as "rent," and we may henceforth conveniently distinguish it from the rent actually paid by cultivators as "economic rent." Arising in the manner described, "economic rent" cannot properly be said to owe its existence to either labourer, capitalist, or landlord. It is rather a factitious value incident to the progress of society under external physical conditions which necessitate the raising of raw produce at different costs. This being its essential nature, it is plain that, so long as the rent paid by the cultivator of a farm does not exceed what the amount of "economic rent" would be, so long those engaged in agricultural industry will be on neither a better nor a worse footing than those engaged in other occupations. The labourer will have the ordinary wages, the capitalist the ordinary profit of the country. On the other hand, it is evident that if the cultivator be required to pay more than this-if the rent exacted from him encroach upon the domain of wages and profits-he is so far placed at a disadvantage as compared with other producers, and is deprived of the ordinary inducements to industry. It thus becomes a question of capital importance, what provision exists in the conditions of an industrial community to prevent this result;—what security we have that the land of a country once given up to private speculation

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-the limits set by "economic rent" shall, in the main, be observed by the actual rent which landlords obtain. Does the principle of laissezfaire-that play of interests developed by competition which in manufacturing and trading operations maintains the harmony of individual with general interests-does this suffice to secure, under

(1) This position, to be accurate, needs a qualification which it will receive further on. As it stands it is correct for the purposes of the argument.

ordinary circumstances, the same harmony in the transactions of which land is the subject? If it shall appear that it does not, then, I think, a case will have been made out for the interposition of some other agency-public opinion, custom, or, failing these, direct State action to supply that which the principle of unrestricted competition has failed to supply-to secure an end which cannot but be regarded as among the legitimate ends of government-the coincidence in an important field of human activity of the individual with the general well-being.

The influence which is ordinarily supposed to suffice for this purpose is the competition with agriculture of other modes of investing capital. The farmer, we are told, before taking a farm, will consider what rent he can pay consistently with obtaining the usual returns upon his industry; if the landlord demands more than is consistent with this, he will decline the bargain, and embark his means in some other occupation. Rent, it is said, can thus never rise, for any length of time, or, as a general rule, above the level prescribed by the economic conditions of the case. But, as has often been pointed out, and, as is obvious at first blush, this argument supposes a state of things which exists in but few countries in the world, if indeed it exists, or ever can exist, in any. It supposes all farmers to be capitalists-capitalists on a scale implying the possession of disposable wealth in substantial amount; and it supposes a variety of occupations other than agriculture, soliciting investment, into any of which—a landlord proving unreasonable-farmers can turn their capital. The countries in which these conditions are realised in the highest degree—rather, I should say, in which the nearest approximation to their realisation has been attained-are England and Scotland; and yet it is very evident that in England and Scotland the uncontrolled play of the principle of competition in dealing with land is not found sufficient for keeping the relations of landlord and tenant in a satisfactory state. If it be, then what is the meaning of the current language upon this subject? of "good" and "bad ” applied to landlords in a sense in which the same epithets are never applied to traders in other commodities than land-of such phrases as "what a good landlord would do "-this being assumed to be something quite different from what his pecuniary interest would lead him to do--of the constant appeal to the moralities of the landlord and tenant relation ? What is the meaning of landlords, of English landlords, boasting that they do not let their lands at a competition rent? What, again, is the meaning of courts of law

(1) It will be said, perhaps, that the phrase "good and bad employers" is used with a similar connotation. In general, I think the words mean no more than persons employing largely at the market rates. If they mean more than this, it is when used by those who regard labour as an exceptional commodity, the remuneration of which should not be left to the play of competition. The exception thus proves the rule.