ture; or, rather, it forces
together the independent units, and welds them into an aggregate. The
influence of this doctrine upon other economical speculations is of
the highest importance. One critical stage in the process is marked by
the enunciation of the theory of rent, which was to become another
essential article of the true faith. The introduction of this doctrine
is characteristic, and marks the point at which Ricardo superseded
Malthus as chief expositor of the doctrine.

Malthus's views were first fully given in his _Inquiry into Rent_, the
second of three pamphlets which he published during the corn-law
controversy of 1814-15.[281] The opinions now stated had, he says,
been formed in the course of his lecturing at Haileybury; and he made
them public on account of their bearing upon the most absorbing
questions of the time. The connection of the theory with Malthus's
speculations and with the contemporary difficulties is indeed obvious.
The landlord had clearly one of the reserved seats at the banquet of
nature. He was the most obvious embodiment of 'security' as opposed to
equality. Malthus, again, had been influenced by the French economists
and their theory of the 'surplus fund,' provided by agriculture.
According to them, as he says,[282] this fund or rent constitutes the
whole national wealth. In his first edition he had defended the
economists against some of Adam Smith's criticisms; and though he
altered his views and thought that they had been led into preposterous
errors, he retained a certain sympathy for them. Agriculture has still
a certain 'pre-eminence.' God has bestowed upon the soil the
'inestimable quality of being able to maintain more persons than are
necessary to work it.'[283] It has the special virtue that the supply
of necessaries generates the demand. Make more luxuries and the price
may fall; but grow more food and there will be more people to eat it.
This, however, seems to be only another way of stating an unpleasant
fact. The blessing of 'fertility' counteracts itself. As he argues in
the essay,[284] an equal division of land might produce such an
increase of population as would exhaust any conceivable increase of
food. These views--not, I think, very clear or consistently worked
out--lead apparently to the conclusion that the fertility is indeed a
blessing, but on condition of being confined to a few. The result, in
any case, is the orthodox theory of rent. The labourer gets less