ent upon the principle of commerce.
Now, the fundamental law of commerce being equivalence of the products
exchanged, any thing which destroys this equivalence violates the law.
There is an error in the estimate which needs to be corrected.

Buchanan--a commentator on Smith--regarded farm-rent as the result of a
monopoly, and maintained that labor alone is productive. Consequently,
he thought that, without this monopoly, products would rise in price;
and he found no basis for farm-rent save in the civil law. This opinion
is a corollary of that which makes the civil law the basis of property.
But why has the civil law--which ought to be the written expression of
justice--authorized this monopoly? Whoever says monopoly, necessarily
excludes justice. Now, to say that farm-rent is a monopoly sanctioned by
the law, is to say that injustice is based on justice,--a contradiction
in terms.

Say answers Buchanan, that the proprietor is not a monopolist, because a
monopolist "is one who does not increase the utility of the merchandise
which passes through his hands."

How much does the proprietor increase the utility of his tenant's
products? Has he ploughed, sowed, reaped, mowed, winnowed, weeded? These
are the processes by which the tenant and his employees increase
the utility of the material which they consume for the purpose of
reproduction.

"The landed proprietor increases the utility of products by means of his
implement, the land. This implement receives in one state, and returns
in another the materials of which wheat is composed. The action of
the land is a chemical process, which so modifies the material that it
multiplies it by destroying it. The soil is then a producer of utility;
and when it [the soil?] asks its pay in the form of profit, or farm
rent, for its proprietor, it at the same time gives something to the
consumer in exchange for the amount which the consumer pays it. It gives
him a produced utility; and it is the production of this utility which
warrants us in calling land productive, as well as labor."

Let us clear up this matter.

The blacksmith who manufactures for the farmer implements of husbandry,
the wheelwright who makes him a cart, the mason who builds his barn,
the carpenter, the basket-maker, &c.,--all of whom contribute to
agricultural production by the tools which they provide,--are producers
of utility; consequently, they are entitled to a part of the products.

"Undoubtedly,"