yed, he would withdraw it; since by employing it he gets, by the
supposition, only the ordinary and usual profits which he may obtain by
any other employment of stock; and therefore he cannot afford to pay
rent for it, unless the price of raw produce should further rise, or,
which is the same thing, unless the usual and general rate of profits
should fall.

If the comprehensive mind of Adam Smith had been directed to this fact,
he would not have maintained that rent forms one of the component parts
of the price of raw produce; for price is everywhere regulated by the
return obtained by this last portion of capital, for which no rent
whatever is paid. If he had adverted to this principle, he would have
made no distinction between the law which regulates the rent of mines
and the rent of land.

"Whether a coal mine, for example," he says, "can afford any rent,
depends partly upon its fertility, and partly upon its situation. A mine
of any kind may be said to be either fertile or barren, according as the
quantity of mineral which can brought from it by a certain quantity of
labour, is greater or less than what can be brought by an equal quantity
from the greater part of other mines of the same kind. Some coal mines,
advantageously situated, cannot be wrought on account of their
barrenness. The produce does not pay the expense. They can afford
neither profit nor rent. There are some, of which the produce is barely
sufficient to pay the labour, and replace, together with its ordinary
profits, the stock employed in working them. They afford some profit to
the undertaker of the work, but no rent to the landlord. They can be
wrought advantageously by nobody but the landlord, who being himself the
undertaker of the work, gets the ordinary profit of the capital which he
employs in it. Many coal mines in Scotland are wrought in this manner,
and can be wrought in no other. The landlord will allow nobody else to
work them without paying some rent, and nobody can afford to pay any.

"Other coal mines in the same country, sufficiently fertile, cannot be
wrought on account of their situation. A quantity of mineral sufficient
to defray the expense of working, could be brought from the mine by the
ordinary, or even less than the ordinary quantity of labour; but in an
inland country, thinly inhabited, and without either good roads or
water-carriage, this quantity could not be sold." The whole principle of
rent is here admirably and pers