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Show 230 OF THE RENT OF LAND. [ CH. III. ciety n1ust be most scantily provided with conve .. nient luxuries and leisure; while if this surplus be large, manufactures, foreign luxuries, arts, letters and leisure may abound. It is a little singular, that Mr. Ricardo, vvho has, in general, kept his attention so steadily fixed on permanent and final results, as even to define the natural price of labour to be that price which would maintain a stationary population, although such a price cannot generally occur under moderately good governments, and in an ordinary state of things, for hundreds of years, has always, in treating of rent, ad~pted an opposite course, and referred almost entirely to temporary effects. It is obviously with this sort of reference, that he has objected to Adam Sn1ith for saying that, in rice countri~s a greater share of the produce \Vould belong to the landlord than in corn countries, and that rents in this country would rise, if potatoes were to become the favourite vegetable food of the con1n1on people, instead of corn.* 1\tlr. Ricardo could not but allo,v, indeed he has allowed,t that rents \vould be finally higher in both cases. But he immediately supposes that this chanae is put in . 0 execution at once, and refers to the te1nporary re-sult of land being thrown out of cultivation. Even on this supposition however, all the lands \vhich had been thro,,yn up, would be cultivated again in a very much less time, than it would take to reduce the price of labour, in a natural state of things, to Itt' Wealth of Nations, voL i. Book I. c. xi. pp. 24$-250. 6th edit, t Prine. of Pol it. Econ. ch. xxiv. p. 423. SEC. X.] 0~"' THE RENT O.F' LAND. 231 the maintenance only of a stationary population. And therefore, with a view to permanent and final results, which are the results which Mr. Ricardo has tnainly considered throughout his work, he ought to have allowed the truth of Adam Smith's statements. But, in point of fact, there is every probability that not even a temporary fall of rent would take place. No nation ever has changed or ever will change the nature of its food all at once. The process, both in reference to the new system of cultivation to be adopted, and the new tastes to be generated, must necessarily be very slo\v. In the greater portion of Europe, it is probable, that a cliange from corn to rice could never take place; and where it could, it \\rould require such great preparations for irrigation, as to give ample tin1e for an increase of population fully equal to the increased quantity of food produced. In those countries where rice is actually grown, the rents are kno,vn to be very high. Dr. Buchanan, in his valuable travels through the Mysore, says, that in the watered lands below . the Ghats, the government was in the habit of taking two-thirds of the crop.* This is an an1ount of rent which probably no lands cultivated in corn can ever yield ; and in those parts of India and other countries, \Vhere an actual chano·e has taken b place fron1 the cultivation of corn to the cultiva-tion of rice, I have _ little doubt that rents have not only finally risen very considerably, but have risen even during the progress of the change. * Vol. !i. p. 212. Q t1 |
