ecessity
of taking inferior land into cultivation which is the cause of the rise
of rent. Rent, it must be remembered, is not in proportion to the
absolute fertility of the land in cultivation, but in proportion to its
relative fertility. Whatever cause may drive capital to inferior land,
must elevate rent; the cause of rent being, as stated by Mr. Malthus in
his third proposition, "the comparative scarcity of the most fertile
land." The price of corn will naturally rise with the difficulty of
producing the last portions of it; but as the cost of production will
not increase, as wages and profits taken together will continue always
of the same value,[52] it is evident that the excess of price above the
cost of production, or, in other words, rent, must rise with the
diminished fertility of the land, unless it is counteracted by a great
reduction of capital, population, and demand. It does not appear then
that Mr. Malthus's proposition is correct: rent does not immediately and
necessarily rise or fall with the increased or diminished fertility of
the land; but its increased fertility renders it capable of paying at
some future time an augmented rent. Land possessed of very little
fertility can never bear any rent; land of moderate fertility may be
made, as population increases, to bear a moderate rent; and land of
great fertility a high rent; but it is one thing to be able to bear a
high rent, and another thing actually to pay it. Rent may be lower in a
country where lands are exceedingly fertile than in a country where they
yield a moderate return, it being in proportion rather to relative than
absolute fertility--to the value of the produce, and not to its
abundance. Mr. Malthus says, that the "cause of the excess of price of
the necessaries of life above the cost of production, is to be found in
their abundance rather than their scarcity, and is essentially different
from the high price of those peculiar products of the earth, not
connected with food, which may be called natural and necessary
monopolies."

In what are they essentially different? Would not the abundance of those
peculiar products of the earth cause a rise of rent, if the demand for
them at the same time increased? and can rent ever rise, whatever the
commodity produced may be, from abundance merely, and without an
increase of demand?

The second cause of rent mentioned by Mr. Malthus, namely, "that quality
peculiar to the necessaries of life, of bein