HAVING in a former number ' endeavored to explain the dilference between Adam Smith'and Mr. Ricardo on the subject of Value, we proceed to the consideration of their difl'erent views respecting Rent, Profits, and Wages. '

According to Dr. Smith, Rent owes its existence to the absolute fertility of the soil, or its power, either natural or acquired,of yielding more food than is required to maintain the labor employed upon it, and to alford the cultivator the ordinary profits of stock, l

whatever their rate is, at the time being. “ Land,” says he, “ in al- 4 most any situation, produces a greater quantity of food than . what is snflicient to maintain all the labor necessary for bringing 1 it to market, in the most liberal way in which that labor is ever maintained. The surplus too is always more than suflicient to replace the stock which employed that labor, together with its pro- } fits. Something, therefore, always, remains for at Rent to the I landlord.”

Mr. Ricardo professes on this subject to have adopted the opinions of Mr. Malthus. In his tract on the “ Profits of Stock,” ' published in 1815, he says (page 11), “ In all thatI have said con- ' cerning the origin and progress of Rent, I have briefly repeated, and endeavored to elucidate the principles which Mr. Malthus has so ably laid down on the same subject, in his ‘Inquiry into the nature and progress of Rent,’ a work abou‘nding in original ideas, which are useful, not only as they regardtRent, but as connected

.with the question of taxation, perhaps the most diflicult and intri

cate of all the subjects on which Political Economy treats ;” and in the preface to his work on the Principles of Political Economy he notices Mr. Malthus as having been the first to give to the world the true theory of Rent.

Now the causes of Rent as stated by Mr. Malthus are the three 1 following, viz.:

1 I 3] Opinions Visit; arid 'quality of the earth by ‘which it can be inade to yield a greater portion of the necessaries of life than

:5 required for the maintenance of the persons employed on the "lainda . .

2dly, That quantity peculiar to the necessaries of life of being

iableito create their owni demand, or to raise up a number of demnanders in proportion to the quantity of necessaries produced: and, _ > ' ' 1 . 8dly, The icomparative scarcity of the most fertile land. Ricardo,' however, in his explanation of the subject omits the two first of these causes, and dwells solely on the last. Rent, he conceiveshtohe entirely a question of relative fertility. When a country is first occupied, the best lands, or those most advantageously situated, arefirst'cultivated, and as soon as theincreasing demand for'foodtrenders it necessary to have recourse to land of a secondary quality ior less‘ advantageously situated, or, what comes to the same ithing, when an additional capital on the best land yields‘a smallerproportionate return; such land, or the first portion of capital bestowed .upon it, yields a Rent equal to the difference ; and when land of a' third quality is taken into cultivation, the secondary quality yields a Rent, and the first a higher Rent than before, and

so ionz all lands, excepting the last cultivated, yielding more or less '

rent in proportion to the excess of their produce above that last.

This account of the matter is undoubtedly very plain and simple, and appears, on the first view of it, plausible enough ; but that diversity of soil alone is insuflicient to account for‘ the existence of Rent, will appear from the following short argument.

Let it be supposed that the fertility of the best soils were lloweredhand that of the worst raised so as to make the whole of Lan>-uniform quality, while the total quantity of corn produced lremained the same. In this case, its price would also remain the same, audit is obvious the only difference would be, that instead

f some'landsyielding agreat Rent, and some little or none, the whole would now yield an uniform and moderate Rent. But, if Mr. Ricardo’s' doctrine' weretrue, all Rent would at once disapgear and vanish away. ' ' '

It is impossible then to ascribe Rent solely to relative fertility, or the difi'erence between the worst and best lands in cultivation, since on the supposition of there being no such difference, Rent would still exist, It will however be readily allowed that gradation of soil is the reason why Rent appears at a much earlier

period of cultivation than would otherwise be the case. If there . '

were two countries of equal size and extent, the one having the' whole of its soil of an uniform and high fertility, and the other a

portion of its lands only, of the best quality, and the rest inferior