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Nature and Progress of Rent By: Thomas R. Malthus (1766-1834) |
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AND THE PRINCIPLES BY WHICH IT IS REGULATED. By The Rev. T. R. Malthus Professor of History and Political Economy In the East India College,
Hertfordshire LONDON: PRINTED FOR JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1815.
Contents: Advertisement Rent
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The following tract contains the substance of some notes on rent, which,
with others on different subjects relating to political economy, I have
collected in the course of my professional duties at the East India
College. It has been my intention, at some time or other, to put them in
a form for publication; and the very near connection of the subject of
the present inquiry, with the topics immediately under discussion, has
induced me to hasten its appearance at the present moment. It is the
duty of those who have any means of contributing to the public stock of
knowledge, not only to do so, but to do it at the time when it is most
likely to be useful. If the nature of the disquisition should appear to
the reader hardly to suit the form of a pamphlet, my apology must be,
that it was not originally intended for so ephemeral a shape. RENT &c.
The rent of land is a portion of the national revenue, which has always
been considered as of very high importance. According to Adam Smith, it is one of the three original sources of
wealth, on which the three great divisions of society are supported. By the Economists it is so pre eminently distinguished, that it is
considered as exclusively entitled to the name of riches, and the sole
fund which is capable of supporting the taxes of the state, and on which
they ultimately fall. And it has, perhaps, a particular claim to our attention at the present
moment, on account of the discussions which are going on respecting the
corn laws, and the effects of rent on the price of raw produce, and the
progress of agricultural improvement. The rent of land may be defined to be that portion of the value of the
whole produce which remains to the owner of the land, after all the
outgoings belonging to its cultivation, of whatever kind, have been
paid, including the profits of the capital employed, estimated according
to the usual and ordinary rate of the profits of agricultural stock at
the time being. It sometimes happens, that from accidental and temporary circumstances,
the farmer pays more, or less, than this; but this is the point towards
which the actual rents paid are constantly gravitating, and which is
therefore always referred to when the term is used in a general sense. The immediate cause of rent is obviously the excess of price above the
cost of production at which raw produce sells in the market. The first object therefore which presents itself for inquiry, is the
cause or causes of the high price of raw produce. After very careful and repeated revisions of the subject, I do not find
myself able to agree entirely in the view taken of it, either by Adam
Smith, or the Economists; and still less, by some more modern writers. Almost all these writers appear to me to consider rent as too nearly
resembling in its nature, and the laws by which it is governed,
the excess of price above the cost of production, which is the
characteristic of a monopoly. Adam Smith, though in some parts of the eleventh chapter of his
first book he contemplates rent quite in its true light, [1] and has
interspersed through his work more just observations on the subject than
any other writer, has not explained the most essential cause of the
high price of raw produce with sufficient distinctness, though he often
touches on it; and by applying occasionally the term monopoly to the
rent of land, without stopping to mark its more radical peculiarities,
he leaves the reader without a definite impression of the real
difference between the cause of the high price of the necessaries of
life, and of monopolized commodities. Some of the views which the Economists have taken of the nature of rent
appear to me, in like manner, to be quite just; but they have mixed them
with so much error, and have drawn such preposterous and contradictory
conclusions from them, that what is true in their doctrines, has been
obscured and lost in the mass of superincumbent error, and has in
consequence produced little effect... Continue reading book >>
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