The rise in the price of agricultural produce, at one and the same time raises rent, and makes it practicable to cultivate land less fertile, or whose powers have been decayed. But there is no foundation for the inverted proposition, that it is only when the powers of land decay, that there will be rent. There would be rent though there was no such thing as decayed or inferior land within the circle to which a given community is limited for its supply, as soon as the demand for corn began to press against the limits of the produce. The fact of there being either decayed or inferior land at all, is itself but an accident, which might have been or might not have been, like the fact of there being weak or inferior spirits; and has no more to do with the general cause of rent, than the fact of there being weak spirits has to do with the general fact of spirits selling for a price. If any man were to assert that proof spirits sold for a high price, because there were weaker spirits that were selling for a lower, it would be clear that the whole was a fallacy, cultivated for the sake of the inference. The case of rent is of the same kind; and the false inference, for the sake of which the fallacy is cultivated, is that tithes fall on the consumer."

We have chosen to state the ques tion, not as it may be said to exist between churchmen and economists, but between different classes of the economists themselves. Colonel Thomson is no bigot. He cannot be reckoned amongst the friends of the Church as a religious establishment. On many, and on vital questions, the Destructives claim him as their own. But he is a well-informed gentleman, whose time in the University was not thrown away; and the labour which he bestowed on the severer sciences has so disciplined his mind and sharpened his intellect, that he sees at a glance the weak points in the positions of his less lettered brethren, whose reasonings are as inaccurate as their principles are dangerous.

This able logician has stated the matter at issue with a candour that commands respect, and a clearness that renders comment unnecessary. Land is cultivated only because the cultivation of it is profitable; such

cultivation is only profitable because of the existence of a class of persons who are willing to give the cultivators a remunerating price; in proportion as demand thus presses upon supply, in the same proportion will it be profitable to cultivate land upon which, in order to produce the same returns, more of capital and of labour must be expended. But it is the previous willingness to give the price, which in every case causes the cultivation of the land; not the cultivation of the land which induces a necessity of giving the price. In other words, it is the market that governs the farmer, not the farmer the market.

It is true that the expenses of cultivation will determine, in one direction, the price for which corn will be sold; that is, it will determine its lowest price, which may rise, however, " to an extent only limited by the circumstances of the particular case, whenever the competition increases the price faster than the outlay the produce."-True Theory of Rent, p. 17.

Supposing all land to be subject to tithe, (which is not the case universally,) and supposing all land for the first time brought into cultivation subject to tithe, (which is not the case at all,) upon these suppositions, the produce of nine-tenths of the land must be sufficient to remunerate the cultivators, before the whole of it can be brought into cultivation; and therefore the consumers must pay the tithe, provided the tithe is the only residuum, after the expenses of cultivation have been paid. For, in this case, there can be no rent; the tithe, the profits of stock, and the wages of labour, absorbing the whole of the treasure. Or, if the tithe be considered a rent, as in truth it is, here is a case in which rent must be paid by the consumer. But, even in this extreme case, it is to be observed, that it is the willingness of the consumers to pay the tax which induces the growers to cultivate, not a disposition on the part of the growers to cultivate, which compels the consumers to pay the tax.

Viewing the matter in this light, (which the reader will be good enough to hold in mind is not the practical view of the question,) economists have represented tithe as

might almost pass for a truism, namely, that the market governs the farmer, not the farmer the market. If that be true, it is undoubtedly true, that the farmer, in taking land, will consider not what price he may be able to extort, but what price the public are willing to give for his produce. His bargain with the landlord will, therefore, be made with reference to existing prices, and he will consent to pay only such a rent as leaves him able to pay the other burdens to which the land is liable, after having replaced his capital and realized his profits. At least, no prudent man would make any other kind of bargain. It may be added, that if the farmer may govern the market so as to make the consumer pay the tithe, there is no reason why he may not also govern it so as to make him pay the rent, or, indeed, to carry prices to any height that might be dictated by his cupidity.

But farmers have no such power over the market. If they had, it would be, ultimately, most injurious to themselves. Like other dealers, they will consider themselves sufficiently remunerated if they are able to replace their capital, with the ordinary profits of stock. And like other dealers they will only calculate upon being able so to do, when a willingness to give remunerating prices has been previously evinced by the public. To act upon any other principle, would be to reverse the maxim which, in all such matters, usually governs the conduct of mankind.

If farmers may throw the tithe on the consumers, in the manner Ricardo has supposed, there is no reason why they might not throw upon them a sum equivalent to tithe, supposing tithe to be extinguished. So that, at all events, the public would not benefit by their extinction, unless farmers may be supposed to be more willing to pay a tax, than to realize a personal advantage.

If the landowner united in his own person the characters of landlord and cultivator, it is clear that the charge of tithe must fall upon him. And we fully subscribe to the dictum of Colonel Thomson," that what he cannot keep himself, he can never recover from others by the intheir eyes open." vention of selling it to them with

niably true, that tithe cannot constitute any part of the market price of corn, when that price is regulated by the produce raised upon lands that are tithe-free. And it must, generally speaking, be so regulated, when so large a proportion of the lands employed in agriculture is so circumstanced. Price rises, not because tithe is paid, but because demand presses against supply. No man will cultivate his ground merely in order to pay a tithe, if he can do nothing more. Price must have risen in consequence of an increase in the effectual demand, before land which is subject to tithe will be cultivated; and thus the market price of all produce grown upon the lands of a better quality will have so far exceeded the cost price, as to leave, after paying the profits of stock and the wages of labour, a very considerable residuum, which will be shared between the clergyman and the landlord; the clergyman separating his tenth, and the landlord ap. propriating the remainder.

But we do not agree with this able writer, that even if all lands were subject to a uniform tithe, that burden could be thrown upon the consumer in any case, beyond the precise point of time when the market price was just sufficient to pay the tithe, the profits of stock, and the other expenses of cultivation. Up to that point of time, the land would not be cultivated; for no one would consent to cultivate it at a loss. And after that point of time there would begin to accumulate that residuum above the cost price, which constitutes the fund out of which tithe and rent must be finally paid. So that the tithe would be thrown up upon what may be denominated the surplus profits; and, therefore, could not, in any such case, constitute any portion of the expenses of produc

tion.

This, however, will be said to be the question-Would it be thus thrown up, or would it be projected upon the consumers? Projected upon the consumers, say Ricardo and his disciples; because corn is a necessary which the public must purchase, and for which the farmers can, accordingly, get their own price. Now this position directly contradicts what we should have thought

sentence more. Colonel Thomson has settled the question. Tithe is not paid by the consumer, even as rent is not paid by the consumer. Both are paid out of that surplus fund which, according to the settled laws which regulate the growth and the sale of agricultural produce, MUST be accumulated,though neither landlords nor clergymen were in existence.

Upon the whole, we are not surprised at the prejudice which some of our political economists cherish against Universities. They must consider that, by their means, in the person of Colonel Thomson, a most hopeful disciple has been woefully perverted. Had it not been for his pernicious scientific education, and his acquaintance with logic, he never would have been a dissenter from their views, or led to question the soundness of the principles upon which they proposed to carry on their sapping and mining operations against the Established Church.

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has been mentioned already is in the inattention to the nature of effectual demand, and the assumption that the produce cannot be diminished. It is not true that men say, we must and will have such and such a quantity of corn, whatever may be the price.' But they say, we will have as much as it is more convenient for us to pay for at the price for which the grower will grow it, than do without it.' It is a question of equilibrium, between the inconvenience of paying a high price, and the inconvenience of economizing in the use of corn; and whatever may be the laws by which the magnitude of these two inconveniences severally vary, there must be an equilibrium somewhere, at a point short of consuming the old quantity. That men cannot live without a certain quantity, meaning thereby some quantity, of food, is true; but it is not true that men are living on a fixed quantity, which will not be diminished on an increase of price. At the siege of Gibraltar, General Elliott ascertained by experiment upon himself, that a man can live on four ounces of food per day. If this is assumed as the smallest quantity on which life can be sustained, it is still, in the first place, not true that the community, or any considerable portion of its members, are living on four ounces of food per day; and, secondly, even if it was true, the result of an increase of price would be, not that the same quantity of food would continue to be bought by the consumers, whatever was the price, but that the population would begin to decrease by all the modes consequent on insufficient food, and that for this decrement there would be no food bought at all. So far from there being any necessity that the same quantity of food shall be bought, it does not even follow that the buyers shall all live to buy. But there is no necessity for pushing the argument to this length. It is sufficient to attend to the fact, that when there is a necessity for the consumption being diminished, because the corn is not there to be consumed, an increase of price is the engine that carries it into effect; a clear proof that increase of price diminishes consump

tion."

Upon this part of the subject it can be scarcely necessary to add a

Before we take leave of him, we cannot but observe, that, while we are thankful for the instruction which his pages have imparted to us, we lament that his discussion of the question has not been somewhat more expanded. We fear that many of his readers will have reason to consider him liable to the censure which Horace pronounces, when he says, "Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio." This cannot proceed from barrenness of imagination. Colonel Thomson's illustrations are as ready and pertinent, as his reasoning is perspicuous and strong. It is therefore solely to be attributed to the severity of the school in which he has been trained, to the rigidly scientific habits into which his mind has been disciplined; and we could wish to succeed in persuading him, that, without in the least departing from academic dignity and scholastic strictness, it would be possible for him to convey his thoughts in a manner much more level to the capacities of all sorts and descriptions of readers. He can have no interest in hiding his light under a bushel.

But we must return to our subject. Whether tithes are, or are not, paid by the consumer, are they not a tax upon industry? We think not; and we shall give our reasons. Those who take the most adverse view of