he original produce of the more fertile
portions is set apart for rent. It is singular that this quality in the
land, which should have been noticed as an imperfection, compared with
the natural agents by which manufacturers are assisted, should have been
pointed out as constituting its peculiar pre-eminence. If air, water,
the elasticity of steam, and the pressure of the atmosphere, were of
various qualities; if they could be appropriated, and each quality
existed only in moderate abundance, they as well as the land would
afford a rent, as the successive qualities were brought into use. With
every worse quality employed, the value of the commodities in the
manufacture of which they were used would rise, because equal quantities
of labour would be less productive. Man would do more by the sweat of
his brow, and nature perform less; and the land would be no longer
pre-eminent for its limited powers.

If the surplus produce which land affords in the form of rent be an
advantage, it is desirable that, every year, the machinery newly
constructed should be less efficient than the old, as that would
undoubtedly give a greater exchangeable value to the goods manufactured,
not only by that machinery, but by all the other machinery in the
kingdom; and a rent would be paid to all those who possessed the most
productive machinery.[7]

The rise of rent is always the effect of the increasing wealth of the
country, and of the difficulty of providing food for its augmented
population. It is a symptom, but it is never a cause of wealth; for
wealth often increases most rapidly while rent is either stationary, or
even falling. Rent increases most rapidly, as the disposable land
decreases in its productive powers. Wealth increases most rapidly in
those countries where the disposable land is most fertile, where
importation is least restricted, and where through agricultural
improvements, productions can be multiplied without any increase in the
proportional quantity of labour, and where consequently the progress of
rent is slow.

If the high price of corn were the effect, and not the cause of rent,
price would be proportionally influenced as rents were high or low, and
rent would be a component part of price. But that corn which is produced
with the greatest quantity of labour is the regulator of the price of
corn, and rent does not and cannot enter in the least degree as a
component part of its price. Adam Smith, therefore, cannot be c