when the lease comes to be renewed. In like manner all
those improved implements of husbandry which save expense to the farmer,
such as machines for threshing and reaping, whatever gives him easier
access to the market, such as good roads, canals, and bridges, though
they lessen the original cost of corn, do not lessen its market price.
Whatever is saved by those improvements, therefore, belongs to the
landlord as part of his rent."

It is evident that if we yield to Mr. Buchanan the basis on which his
argument is built, namely, that the price of corn always yields a rent,
all the consequences which he contends for would follow of course. Taxes
on the farmer would then fall not on the consumer but on rent; and all
improvements in husbandry would increase rent: but I hope I have made it
sufficiently clear, that until a country is cultivated in every part,
and up to the highest degree, there is always a portion of capital
employed on the land which yields no rent, and that it is this portion
of capital, the result of which, as in manufactures, is divided between
profits and wages, that regulates the price of corn. The price of corn
then, which does not afford a rent, being influenced by the expenses of
its production, those expenses cannot be paid out of rent. The
consequence therefore of those expenses increasing, is a higher price,
and not a lower rent.[21]

It is remarkable that both Adam Smith and Mr. Buchanan, who entirely
agree that taxes on raw produce, a land-tax, and tithes, all fall on
the rent of land, and not on the consumers of raw produce, should
nevertheless admit that taxes on malt would fall on the consumer of
beer, and not on the rent of the landlord. Adam Smith's argument is so
able a statement of the view which I take of the subject of the tax on
malt, and every other tax on raw produce, that I cannot refrain from
offering it to the attention of the reader.

"The rent and profits of barley land must always be nearly equal to
those of other equally fertile, and equally well cultivated land. If
they were less, some part of the barley land would soon be turned to
some other purpose; and if they were greater, more land would soon be
turned to the raising of barley. When the ordinary price of any
particular produce of land is at what may be called a monopoly price, a
tax upon it necessarily reduces the rent and profit[22] of the land
which grows it. A tax upon the produce of those precious vineyards, of