HKB
original tenant refused, some other person would be found willing to give all which exceeded that rate of profit to the owner of the land from which he derived it.
In this case, as well as in the other, the capital last employed pays no rent. For the greater productive powers of the first 1000l., fifteen quarters is paid for rent, for the employment of the second 1000l. no rent whatever is paid. If a third 1000l. be employed on the same land, with a return of seventy-five quarters, rent will then be paid for the second 1000l. and will be equal to the difference between the produce of these two, or ten quarters; and at the same time the rent of the first 1000l. will rise from fifteen to twenty-five quarters; while the last 1000l. will pay no rent whatever.
If then good land existed in a quantity much more abundant than the production of food for an increasing population required, or if capital could be indefinitely employed without a diminished return on the old land, there could be no rise of rent; for rent invariably proceeds from the employment of an additional quantity of labour with a proportionally less return.
The most fertile, and most favourably situated land will be first cultivated, and the exchangeable value of its produce will be adjusted in the same manner as the exchangeable value of all other commodities, by the total quantity of labour necessary in various forms, from first to last, to produce it, and bring it to market. When land of an inferior quality is taken into cultivation, the exchangeable value of raw produce will rise, because more labour is required to produce it.
The exchangeable value of all commodities, whether they be manufactured, or the produce of the mines, or the produce of land, is always regulated, not by the less quantity of labour that will suffice for their production under circumstances highly favourable, and exclusively enjoyed by those who have peculiar facilities of production; but by the greater quantity of labour necessarily bestowed on their production by those who have no such facilities; by those who continue to produce them under the most unfavourable circumstances; meaning--by the most unfavourable circumstances, the most unfavourable under which the quantity of produce required renders it necessary to carry on the production.
Thus, in a charitable institution, where the poor are set to work with the funds of benefactors, the general prices of the commodities, which are the produce of such work, will not be governed by the peculiar facilities afforded to these workmen, but by the common, usual, and natural difficulties, which every other manufacturer will have to encounter. The manufacturer enjoying none of these facilities might indeed be driven altogether from the market, if the supply afforded by these favoured workmen were equal to all the wants of the community; but if he continued the trade, it would be only on condition that he should derive from it the usual and general rate of profits on stock; and that could only happen when his commodity sold for a price proportioned to the quantity of labour bestowed on its production.[6]