ng
to a rich and highly taxed country. But in poor land, the fund of
rent will often be found quite insufficient for this purpose. There
is a good deal of land in this country of such a quality that the
expenses of its cultivation, together with the outgoings of poor
rates, tithes and taxes, will not allow the farmer to pay more than
a fifth or sixth of the value of the whole produce in the shape of
rent. If we were to suppose the prices of grain to fall from seventy
five shillings to fifty shillings the quarter, the whole of such a
rent would be absorbed, even if the price of the whole produce of
the farm did not fall in proportion to the price of grain, and
making some allowance for a fall in the price of labour. The regular
cultivation of such land for grain would of course be given up, and
any sort of pasture, however scanty, would be more beneficial both
to the landlord and farmer.

But a diminution in the real price of corn is still more efficient,
in preventing the future improvement of land, than in throwing land,
which has been already improved, out of cultivation. In all
progressive countries, the average price of corn is never higher
than what is necessary to continue the average increase of produce.
And though, in much the greater part of the improved lands of most
countries, there is what the French economists call a disposable
produce, that is, a portion which might be taken away without
interfering with future production, yet, in reference to the whole
of the actual produce and the rate at which it is increasing, there
is no part of the price so disposable. In the employment of fresh
capital upon the land to provide for the wants of an increasing
population, whether this fresh capital be employed in bringing more
land under the plough or in improving land already in cultivation,
the main question always depends upon the expected returns of this
capital; and no part of the gross profits can be diminished without
diminishing the motive to this mode of employing it. Every
diminution of price not fully and immediately balanced by a
proportionate fall in all the necessary expenses of a farm, every
tax on the land, every tax on farming stock, every tax on the
necessaries of farmers, will tell in the computation; and if, after
all these outgoings are allowed for, the price of the produce will
not leave a fair remuneration for the capital employed, according to
the general rate of profits and a rent at least eq