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[I.xi.b] part i: Of the Produce of Land which always affords Rent - Adam Smith, Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence Vol. 2a An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 1 [1776]

Edition used:

An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. I ed. R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner, vol. II of the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981).

Part of: The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, 7 vols.

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part i

Of the Produce of Land which always affords Rent

1As men, like all other animals, naturally multiply in proportion to the means of their subsistence, food is always, more or less, in demand.1 It can always purchase or command a greater or smaller quantity of labour, and somebody can always be found who is willing to do something, in order to obtain it. The quantity of labour, indeed, which it can purchase, is not always equal to what it could maintain, if managed in the most œconomical manner, on account of the high wages which are sometimes given to labour. But it can always purchase such a quantity of labour as it can maintain, according to the rate at which that sort of labour is commonly maintained in the neighbourhood.

2But land, in almost any situation, produces a greater quantity of food than what is sufficient to maintain all the labour necessary for bringing it to market, in the most liberal way in which that labour is ever maintained. The surplus too is always more than sufficient to replace the stock which employed that labour, together with its profits. Something, therefore, always remains for a rent to the landlord.2

3The most desart moors in Norway and Scotland produce some sort of pasture for cattle, of which the milk and the increase are always more than sufficient, not only to maintain all the labour necessary for tending them, and to pay the ordinary profit to the farmer or owner of the herd or flock; but to afford some small rent to the landlord. The rent increases in proportion to the goodness of the pasture. The same extent of ground not only maintains a greater number of cattle, but as they are brought within a smaller compass, less labour becomes requisite to tend them, and to collect their produce. The landlord gains both ways; by the increase of the produce, and by the diminution of the labour which must be maintained out of it.

4The rent of land anot onlya varies with its fertility, whatever be its produce, bbutb with its situation, whatever be its fertility.3 Land in the neighbourhood of a town, gives a greater rent than land equally fertile in a distant part of the country. Though it may cost no more labour to cultivate the one than the other, it must always cost more to bring the produce of the distant land to market. A greater quantity of labour, therefore, must be maintained out of it; and the surplus, from which are drawn both the profit of the farmer and the rent of the landlord, must be diminished. But in remote parts of the country the rate of cprofitc, as has already been shown,4 is generally higher than in the neighbourhood of a large town. A smaller proportion of this diminished surplus, therefore, must belong to the landlord.

5Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expence of carriage, put the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with those in the neighbourhood of the town.5 They are upon that account the greatest of all improvements. They encourage the cultivation of the remote, which must always be the most extensive circle of the country. They are advantageous to the town, by breaking down the monopoly of the country in its neighbourhood. They are advantageous even to that part of the country. Though they introduce some rival commodities into the old market, they open many new markets to its produce. Monopoly, besides, is a great enemy to good management, which can never be universally established but in consequence of that free and universal competition which forces every body to have recourse to it for the sake of self–defence. It is not more than fifty years ago that some of the counties in the neighbourhood of London, petitioned the parliament against the extension of the turnpike roads into the remoter counties. Those remoter counties, they pretended, from the cheapness of labour, would be able to sell their grass and corn cheaper in the London market than themselves, and would thereby reduce their rents, and ruin their cultivation. Their rents, however, have risen, and their cultivation has been improved since that time.

6A corn field of moderate fertility produces a much greater quantity of food for man, than the best pasture of equal extent. Though its cultivation requires much more labour, yet the surplus which remains after replacing the seed and maintaining all that labour, is likewise much greater. If a pound of butcher’s–meat, therefore, was never supposed to be worth more than a pound of bread, this greater surplus would everywhere be of greater value, and constitute a greater fund both for the profit of the farmer and the rent of the landlord. It seems to have done so universally in the rude beginnings of agriculture.

7But the relative values of those two different species of food, bread and butcher’s–meat, are very different in the different periods of agriculture. In its rude beginnings, the unimproved wilds, which then occupy the far greater part of the country, are all abandoned to cattle. There is more butcher’s–meat than bread, and bread, therefore, is the food for which there is the greatest competition, and which consequently brings the greatest price.6 At Buenos Ayres, we are told by Ulloa, four reals, one–and–twenty pence halfpenny sterling, was, forty or fifty years ago, the ordinary price of an ox, chosen from a herd of two or three hundred.7 He says nothing of the price of bread, probably because he found nothing remarkable about it. An ox there, he says, costs little more than the labour of catching him. But corn can no–where be raised without a great deal of labour, and in a country which lies upon the river Plate, at that time the direct road from Europe to the silver mines of Potosi, the money price of labour could not be very cheap. It is otherwise when cultivation is extended over the greater part of the country. There is then more bread than butcher’s–meat. The competition changes its direction, and the price of butcher’s–meat becomes greater than the price of bread.

8By the extension besides of cultivation, the unimproved wilds become insufficient to supply the demand for butcher’s–meat.8 A great part of the cultivated lands must be employed in rearing and fattening cattle, of which the price, therefore, must be sufficient to pay, not only the labour necessary for tending them, but the rent which the landlord and the profit which the farmer could have drawn from such land employed in tillage. The cattle bred upon the most uncultivated moors, when brought to the same market, are, in proportion to their weight or goodness, sold at the same price as those which are reared upon the most improved land. The proprietors of those moors profit by it, and raise the rent of their land in proportion to the price of their cattle. It is not more than a century ago that in many parts of the highlands of Scotland, butcher’s–meat was as cheap or cheaper than even bread made of oatmeal.9 The union opened the market of England to the highland cattle. Their ordinary price is at present about three times greater than at the beginning of the century, and the rents of many highland estates have been tripled and quadrupled in the same time. In almost every part of Great Britain a pound of the best butcher’s–meat is, in the present times, generally worth more than two pounds of the best white bread; and in plentiful years it is sometimes worth three or four pounds.

9It is thus that in the progress of improvement the rent and profit of unimproved pasture come to be regulated in some measure by the rent and profit of what is improved, and these again by the rent and profit of corn.10 Corn is an annual crop, butcher’s–meat, a crop which requires four or five years to grow. As an acre of land, therefore, will produce a much smaller quantity of the one species of food than of the other, the inferiority of the quantity must be compensated by the superiority of the price. If it was more than compensated, more corn land would be turned into pasture; and if it was not compensated, part of what was in pasture would be brought back into corn.

10This equality, however, between the rent and profit of grass and those of corn; of the land of which the immediate produce is food for cattle, and of that of which the immediate produce is food for men; must be understood to take place only through the greater part of the improved lands of a great country. In some particular local situations it is quite otherwise, and the rent and profit of grass are much superior to what can be made by corn.

11Thus in the neighbourhood of a great town, the demand for milk and for forage to horses, frequently contribute, dtogetherd with the high price of butcher’s–meat, to raise the value of grass above what may be called its natural proportion to that of corn. This local advantage, it is evident, cannot be communicated to the lands at a distance.

12Particular circumstances have sometimes rendered some countries so populous, that the whole territory, like the lands in the neighbourhood of a great town, has not been sufficient to produce both the grass and the corn necessary for the subsistence of their inhabitants. Their lands, therefore, have been principally employed in the production of grass, the more bulky commodity, and which cannot be so easily brought from a great distance; and corn, the food of the great body of the people, has been chiefly imported from foreign countries.11 Holland is at present in this situation,12 and a considerable part of antient Italy, seems to have been so during the prosperity of the Romans. To feed well, old Cato said, as we are told by Cicero, was the first and most profitable thing in the management of a private estate; to feed tolerably well, the second; and to feed ill, the third.13 To plough, he ranked only in the fourth place of profit and advantage. Tillage, indeed, in that part of antient Italy which lay in the neighbourhood of Rome, must have been very much discouraged by the distributions of corn which were frequently made to the people, either gratuitously, or at a very low price. This corn was brought from the conquered provinces, of which several, instead of taxes, were obliged to furnish a tenth part of their produce at a stated price, about sixpence a peck, to the republick. The low price at which this corn was distributed to the people, must necessarily have sunk the price of what could be brought to the Roman market from Latium, or the antient territory of Rome, and must have discouraged its cultivation in that country.14

13In an open country too, of which the principal produce is corn, a well–enclosed piece of grass will frequently rent higher than any corn field in its neighbourhood. It is convenient for the maintenance of the cattle employed in the cultivation of the corn, and its high rent is, in this case, not so properly paid from the value of its own produce, as from that of the corn lands which are cultivated by means of it. It is likely to fall, if ever the neighbouring lands are compleatly inclosed. The present high rent of enclosed land in Scotland seems owing to the scarcity of enclosure, and will probably last no longer than that scarcity.15 The advantage of enclosure is greater for pasture than for corn. It saves the labour of guarding the cattle, which feed better too when they are not liable to be disturbed by their keeper or his dog.

14But where there is no local advantage of this kind, the rent and profit of corn, or whatever else is the common vegetable food of the people, must naturally regulate, upon the land which is fit for producing it, the rent and profit of pasture.

15The use of the artificial grasses, of turnips, carrots, cabbages, and the other expedients which have been fallen upon to make an equal quantity of land feed a greater number of cattle than when in natural grass, should somewhat reduce, it might be expected, the superiority which, in an improved country, the price of butcher’s–meat naturally has over that of bread. It seems accordingly to have done so; and there is some reason for believing that, at least in the London market, the price of butcher’s–meat in proportion to the price of bread is a good deal lower in the present times than it was in the beginning of the last century.16

16In the appendix to the Life of prince Henry, Doctor Birch has given us an account of the prices of butcher’s–meat as commonly paid by that prince. It is there said, that the four quarters of an ox weighing six hundred pounds usually cost him nine pounds ten shillings, or thereabouts; that is, thirty–one shillings and eight pence per hundred pounds weight.17 Prince Henry died on the 6th of November, 1612, in the nineteenth year of his age.

17In March, 1764, there was a parliamentary enquiry into the causes of the high price of provisions at that time.18 It was then, among other proof to the same purpose, given in evidence by a Virginia merchant, that in March, 1763, he had victualled his ships for twenty–four or twenty–five shillings the hundred weight of beef, which he considered as the ordinary price; whereas, in that dear year, he had paid twenty–seven shillings for the same weight and sort.19 This high price in 1764, is, however, four shillings and eight–pence cheaper than the ordinary price paid by prince Henry; and it is the best beef only, it must be observed, which is fit to be salted for those distant voyages.

18The price paid by prince Henry amounts to 3 ⅘th d. per pound weight of the whole carcase, coarse and choice pieces taken together; and at that rate the choice pieces could not have been sold by retail for less than 4½d. or 5d. the pound.

19In the parliamentary enquiry in 1764, the witnesses stated the price of the choice pieces of the best beef to be to the consumer 4d. and 4¼d. the pound; and the coarse pieces in general to be from seven farthings to 2½d. and 2¾d.; and this they said was in general one half–penny dearer than the same sort of pieces had usually been sold in the month of March. But even this high price is still a good deal cheaper than what we can well suppose the ordinary retail price to have been in the time of prince Henry.

20During the twelve first years of the last century, the average price of the best wheat at the Windsor market was 1 l. 18s. 3 1/6d. the quarter of nine Winchester bushels.

21But in the twelve years preceding 1764, including that year, the average price of the same measure of the best wheat at the same market was 2 l. 1s. 9½d.20

22In the twelve first years of the last century, therefore, wheat appears to have been a good deal cheaper, and butcher’s–meat a good deal dearer than in the twelve years preceding 1764, including that year.

23 In all great countries the greater part of the cultivated lands are employed in producing either food for men or food for cattle. The rent and profit of these regulate the rent and profit of all other cultivated land. If any particular produce afforded less, the land would soon be turned into corn or pasture; and if any afforded more, some part of the lands in corn or pasture would soon be turned to that produce.

24Those productions, indeed, which require either a greater original expence of improvement, or a greater annual expence of cultivation, in order to fit the land for them, appear commonly to afford, the one a greater rent, the other a greater profit than corn or pasture. This superiority, however, will seldom be found to amount to more than a reasonable interest or compensation for this superior expence.

25In a hop garden, a fruit garden, a kitchen garden, both the rent of the landlord, and the profit of the farmer, are generally greater than in a corn or grass field. But to bring the ground into this condition requires more expence. Hence a greater rent becomes due to the landlord. It requires too a more attentive and skilful management. Hence a greater profit becomes due to the farmer. The crop too, at least in the hop and fruit garden, is more precarious. Its price, therefore, besides compensating all occasional losses, must afford something like the profit of insurance. The circumstances of gardeners, generally mean, and always moderate, may satisfy us that their great ingenuity is not commonly over–recompensed. Their delightful art is practised by so many rich people for amusement, that little advantage is to be made by those who practise it for profit; because the persons who should naturally be their best customers, supply themselves with all their most precious productions.21

26The advantage which the landlord derives from such improvements seems at no time to have been greater than what was sufficient to compensate the original expence of making them. In the antient husbandry, after the vineyard, a well–watered kitchen garden seems to have been the part of the farm which was supposed to yield the most valuable produce. But Democritus, who wrote upon husbandry about two thousand years ago, and who was regarded by the antients as one of the fathers of the art, thought they did not act wisely who enclosed a kitchen garden. The profit, he said, would not compensate the expence of a stone wall; and bricks (he meant, I suppose, bricks baked in the sun) mouldered with the rain, and the winter storm, and required continual repairs. Columella, who reports this judgment of Democritus, does not controvert it, but proposes a very frugal method of enclosing with a hedge of ebramblese and briars, which, he says, he had found by experience to be both a lasting and an impenetrable fence;22 but which, it seems, was not commonly known in the time of Democritus. Palladius adopts the opinion of Columella, which had before been recommended by Varro.23 In the judgment of those antient improvers, the produce of a kitchen garden had, it seems, been little more than sufficient to pay the extraordinary culture and the expence of watering; for in countries so near the sun, it was thought proper, in those times as in the present, to have the command of a stream of water, which could be conducted to every bed in the garden. Through the greater part of Europe, a kitchen garden is not at present supposed to deserve a better inclosure than that recommended by Columella. In Great Britain, and some other northern countries, the finer fruits cannot be brought to perfection but by the assistance of a wall. Their price, therefore, in such countries must be sufficient to pay the expence of building and maintaining what they cannot be had without. The fruit–wall frequently surrounds the kitchen garden, which thus enjoys the benefit of an enclosure which its own produce could seldom pay for.

27That the vineyard, when properly planted and brought to perfection, was the most valuable part of the farm, seems to have been an undoubted maxim in the antient agriculture, as it is in the modern through all the wine countries. But whether it was advantageous to plant a new vineyard, was a matter of dispute among the antient Italian husbandmen, as we learn from Columella.24 He decides, like a true lover of all curious cultivation, in favour of the vineyard, and endeavours to show, by a comparison of the profit and expence, that it was a most advantageous improvement. Such comparisons, however, between the profit and expence of new projects, are commonly very fallacious; and in nothing more so than in agriculture. Had the gain actually made by such plantations been commonly as great as he imagined it might have been, there could have been no dispute about it. The same point is frequently at this day a matter of controversy in the wine countries. Their writers on agriculture, indeed, the lovers and promoters of high cultivation, seem generally disposed to decide with Columella in favour of the vineyard. In France the anxiety of the proprietors of the old vineyards to prevent the planting of any new ones, seems to favour their opinion, and to indicate a consciousness in those who must have the experience, that this species of cultivation is at present in that country more profitable than any other. It seems at the same time, however, to indicate another opinion, that this superior profit can last no longer than the laws which at present restrain the free cultivation of the vine.25 In 1731, they obtained an order of council, prohibiting both the planting of new vineyards, and the renewal of those old ones, of which the cultivation had been interrupted for two years; without a particular permission from the king, to be granted only in consequence of an information from the intendant of the province, certifying that he had examined the land, and that it was incapable of any other culture.26 The pretence of this order was the scarcity of corn and pasture, and the super–abundance of wine. But had this super–abundance been real, it would, without any order of council, have effectually prevented the plantation of new vineyards, by reducing the profits of this species of cultivation below their natural proportion to those of corn and pasture. With regard to the supposed scarcity of corn occasioned by the multiplication of vineyards,27 corn is no where in France more carefully cultivated than in the wine provinces, where the land is fit for producing it; as in Burgundy, Guienne, and the Upper Languedoc.28 The numerous hands employed in the one species of cultivation necessarily encourage the other, by affording a ready market for its produce. To diminish the number of those who are capable of paying for it, is surely a most unpromising expedient for encouraging the cultivation of corn. It is like the policy which would promote agriculture by discouraging manufactures.

28The rent and profit of those productions, therefore, which require either a greater original expence of improvement in order to fit the land for them, or a greater annual expence of cultivation, though often much superior to those of corn and pasture, yet when they do no more than compensate such extraordinary expence, are in reality regulated by the rent and profit of those common crops.

29It sometimes happens, indeed, that the quantity of land which can be fitted for some particular produce, is too small to supply the effectual demand. The whole produce can be disposed of to those who are willing to give somewhat more than what is sufficient to pay the whole rent, wages and profit necessary for raising and bringing it to market, according to their natural rates, or according to the rates at which they are paid in the greater part of other cultivated land. The surplus part of the price which remains after defraying the whole expence of improvement and cultivation may commonly, in this case, and in this case only, bear no regular proportion to the like surplus in corn or pasture, but may exceed it in almost any degree; and the greater part of this excess naturally goes to the rent of the landlord.

30The usual and natural proportion, for example, between the rent and profit of wine and those of corn and pasture, must be understood to take place only with regard to those vineyards which produce nothing but good common wine, such as can be raised almost any where, upon any light, gravelly, or sandy soil, and which has nothing to recommend it but its strength and wholesomeness. It is with such vineyards only that the common land of the country can be brought into competition; for with those of a peculiar quality it is evident that it cannot.

31The vine is more affected by the difference of soils than any other fruit tree. From some it derives a flavour which no culture or management can equal, it is supposed, upon any other. This flavour, real or imaginary, is sometimes peculiar to the produce of a few vineyards; sometimes it extends through the greater part of a small district, and sometimes through a considerable part of a large province. The whole quantity of such wines that is brought to market falls short of the effectual demand, or the demand of those who would be willing to pay the whole rent, profit and wages necessary for preparing and bringing them thither, according to the ordinary rate, or according to the rate at which they are paid in common vineyards.29 The whole quantity, therefore, can be disposed of to those who are willing to pay more, which necessarily raises the price above that of common wine. The difference is greater or less, according as the fashionableness and scarcity of the wine render the competition of the buyers more or less eager. Whatever it be, the greater part of it goes to the rent of the landlord. For though such vineyards are in general more carefully cultivated than most others, the high price of the wine seems to be, not so much the effect, as the cause of this careful cultivation. In so valuable a produce the loss occasioned by negligence is so great as to force even the most careless to attention. A small part of this high price, therefore, is sufficient to pay the wages of the extraordinary labour bestowed upon their cultivation, and the profits of the extraordinary stock which puts that labour into motion.

32The sugar colonies possessed by the European nations in the West Indies, may be compared to those precious vineyards. Their whole produce falls short of the effectual demand of Europe, and can be disposed of to those who are willing to give more than what is sufficient to pay the whole rent, profit and wages necessary for preparing and bringing it to market, according to the rate at which they are commonly paid by any other produce.30 In Cochin–china the finest white sugar commonly sells for three piasters the quintal, about thirteen shillings and sixpence of our money, as we are told by* Mr. Poivre, a very careful observer of the agriculture of that country. What is there called the quintal weighs from a hundred and fifty to two hundred Paris pounds, or a hundred and seventy–five Paris pounds at a medium, which reduces the price of the hundred weight English to about eight shillings sterling, not a fourth part of what is commonly paid for the brown or muskavada sugars imported from our colonies, and not a sixth part of what is paid for the finest white sugar.31 The greater part of the cultivated lands in Cochin–china are employed in producing corn and rice, the food of the great body of the people. The respective prices of corn, rice, and sugar, are there probably in the natural proportion, or in that which naturally takes place in the different crops of the greater part of cultivated land, and which recompences the landlord and farmer, as nearly as can be computed, according to what is usually the original expence of improvement and the annual expence of cultivation. But in our sugar colonies the price of sugar bears no such proportion to that of the produce of a rice or corn field either in Europe or ging America. It is commonly said, that a sugar planter expects that the rum and the molasses should defray the whole expence of his cultivation, and that his sugar should be all clear profit. If this be true, for I pretend not to affirm it, it is as if a corn farmer expected to defray the expence of his cultivation with the chaff and the straw, and that the grain should be all clear profit. We see frequently societies of merchants in London and other trading towns, purchase waste lands in our sugar colonies, which they expect to improve and cultivate with profit by means of factors and agents; notwithstanding the great distance and the uncertain returns, from the defective administration of justice in those countries. Nobody will attempt to improve and cultivate in the same manner the most fertile lands of Scotland, Ireland, or the corn provinces of North America, though from the more exact administration of justice in these countries, more regular returns might be expected.

33In Virginia and Maryland, the cultivation of tobacco is preferred, as hmoreh profitable, to that of corn.32 Tobacco might be cultivated with advantage through the greater part of Europe; but in almost every part of Europe it has become a principal subject of taxation, and to collect a tax from every different farm in the country where this plant might happen to be cultivated, would be more difficult, it has been supposed, than to levy one upon its importation at the custom–house. The cultivation of tobacco has upon this account been most absurdly prohibited through the greater part of Europe,33 which necessarily gives a sort of monopoly to the countries where it is allowed; and as Virginia and Maryland produce the greatest quantity of it, they share largely, though with some competitors, in the advantage of this monopoly. The cultivation of tobacco, however, seems not to be so advantageous as that of sugar. I have never even heard of any tobacco plantation that was improved and cultivated by the capital of merchants who resided in Great Britain, and our tobacco colonies send us home no such wealthy planters as we see frequently arrive from our sugar islands. Though from the preference given in those colonies to the cultivation of tobacco above that of corn, it would appear that the effectual demand of Europe for tobacco is not compleatly supplied, it probably is more nearly so than that for sugar: And though the present price of tobacco is probably more than sufficient to pay the whole rent, wages and profit necessary for preparing and bringing it to market, according to the rate at which they are commonly paid in corn land; it must not be so much more as the present price of sugar. Our tobacco planters, accordingly, have shewn the same fear of the super–abundance of tobacco, which the proprietors of the old vineyards in France have of the super–abundance of wine. By act of assembly they have restrained its cultivation to six thousand plants, supposed to yield a thousand weight of tobacco, for every negro between sixteen and sixty years of age.34 Such a negro, over and above this quantity of tobacco, can manage, they reckon, four acres of Indian corn. To prevent the market from being overstocked too, they have sometimes, in plentiful years, we are told by Dr. Douglas, (I suspect he has been ill informed)* burnt a certain quantity of tobacco for every negro, in the same manner as the Dutch are said to do of spices.35 If such violent methods are necessary to keep up the present price of tobacco, the superior advantage of its culture over that of corn, if it still has any, will not probably be of long continuance.

34It is in this manner that the rent of the cultivated land, of which the produce is human food, regulates the rent of the greater part of other cultivated land. No particular produce can long afford less; because the land would immediately be turned to another use: And if any particular produce commonly affords more, it is because the quantity of land which can be fitted for it is too small to supply the effectual demand.

35In Europe corn is the principal produce of land which serves immediately for human food. Except in particular situations, therefore, the rent of corn land regulates in Europe that of all other cultivated land.36 Britain need envy neither the vineyards of France nor the olive plantations of Italy. Except in particular situations, the value of these is regulated by that of corn, in which the fertility of Britain is not much inferior to that of either of those two countries.

36 If in any country the common and favourite vegetable food of the people should be drawn from a plant of which the most common land, with the same or nearly the same culture, produced a much greater quantity than the most fertile does of corn, the rent of the landlord, or the surplus quantity of food which would remain to him, after paying the labour and replacing the stock of the farmer together with its ordinary profits, would necessarily be much greater. Whatever was the rate at which labour was commonly maintained in that country, this greater surplus could always maintain a greater quantity of it, and consequently enable the landlord to purchase or command a greater quantity of it. The real value of his rent, his real power and authority, his command of the necessaries and conveniencies of life with which the labour of other people could supply him, would necessarily be much greater.

37A rice field produces a much greater quantity of food than the most fertile corn field.37 Two crops in the year from thirty to sixty bushels each, are said to be the ordinary produce of an acre. Though its cultivation, therefore, requires more labour, a much greater surplus remains after maintaining all that labour. In those rice countries, therefore, where rice is the common and favourite vegetable food of the people, and where the cultivators are chiefly maintained with it, a greater share of this greater surplus should belong to the landlord than in corn countries. In Carolina, where the planters, as in other British colonies, are generally both farmers and landlords, and where rent consequently is confounded with profit,38 the cultivation of rice is found to be more profitable than that of corn, though their fields produce only one crop in the year, and though, from the prevalence of the customs of Europe, rice is not there the common and favourite vegetable food of the people.

38A good rice field is a bog at all seasons, and at one season a bog covered with water. It is unfit either for corn, or pasture, or vineyard, or, indeed, for any other vegetable produce that is very useful to men: And the lands which are fit for those purposes, are not fit for rice. Even in the rice countries, therefore, the rent of rice lands cannot regulate the rent of the other cultivated land which can never be turned to that produce.

39The food produced by a field of potatoes is not inferior in quantity to that produced by a field of rice, and much superior to what is produced by a field of wheat. Twelve thousand weight of potatoes from an acre of land is not a greater produce than two thousand weight of wheat. The food or solid nourishment, indeed, which can be drawn from each of those two plants, is not altogether in proportion to their weight, on account of the watery nature of potatoes. Allowing, however, half the weight of this root to go to water, a very large allowance, such an acre of potatoes will still produce six thousand weight of solid nourishment, three times the quantity produced by the acre of wheat. An acre of potatoes is cultivated with less expence than an acre of wheat; the fallow, which generally precedes the sowing of wheat, more than compensating the hoeing and other extraordinary culture which is always given to potatoes. Should this root ever become in any part of Europe, like rice in some rice countries, the common and favourite vegetable food of the people, so as to occupy the same proportion of the lands in tillage which wheat and other sorts of grain for human food do at present, the same quantity of cultivated land would maintain a much greater number of people, and the labourers being generally fed with potatoes, a greater surplus would remain after replacing all the stock and maintaining all the labour employed in cultivation. A greater share of this surplus too would belong to the landlord. Population would increase, and rents would rise much beyond what they are at present.

40The land which is fit for potatoes, is fit for almost every other useful vegetable. If they occupied the same proportion of cultivated land which corn does at present, they would regulate, in the same manner, the rent of the greater part of other cultivated land.

41In some parts of Lancashire it is pretended, I have been told, that bread of oatmeal is a heartier food for labouring people than wheaten bread, and I have frequently heard the same doctrine held in Scotland. I am, however, somewhat doubtful of the truth of it. The common people in Scotland, who are fed with oatmeal, are in general neither so strong, nor so handsome as the same rank of people in England, who are fed with wheaten bread. They neither work, so well nor look so well; and as there is not the same difference between the people of fashion in the two countries, experience would seem to show, that the food of the common people in Scotland is not so suitable to the human constitution as that of their neighbours of the same rank in England.39 But it seems to be otherwise with potatoes. The chairmen, porters, and coalheavers in London, and those unfortunate women who live by prostitution, the strongest men and the most beautiful women perhaps in the British dominions, are said to be, the greater part of them, from the lowest rank of people in Ireland, who are generally fed with this root. No food can afford a more decisive proof of its nourishing quality, or of its being peculiarly suitable to the health of the human constitution.40

42It is difficult to preserve potatoes through the year, and impossible to store them, like corn, for two or three years together. The fear of not being able to sell them before they rot, discourages their cultivation, and is, perhaps, the chief obstacle to their ever becoming in any great country, like bread, the principal vegetable food of all the different ranks of the people.41

[1 ]The same point is made at I.viii.39.

[2 ]The thesis that agriculture is the most productive form of investment is considered at II.v.12 where Smith also comments on the relationship between fertility and rent.

[a–a]3–6

[b–b]and 1–2

[3 ]The same point is made concerning mines at I.xi.c.10. The advantage of situation with regard to house–rents is mentioned at V.ii.e.3.

[c–c]profits 4–6

[4 ]See above, I.ix.7.

[5 ]Smith considers public works which facilitate commerce in V.i.d.

[6 ]See below, IV.vii.b.29.

[7 ]A similar statement occurs at I.xi.e.25. Juan and Ulloa commented: ‘The country to the W. S. and N. of Buenos Ayres, lately abounded so greatly in cattle and horses, that the whole cost consisted in taking them; and even then a horse was sold for a dollar of that money, and the usual price of a beast, chosen out of a herd of two or three hundred, only four rials.’ (Voyage historique de l’Amérique méridionale (1752), i.552, translated by John Adams, A Voyage to South America (London, 1807), ii.187.)

[8 ]See below, I.xi.l.2.

[9 ]See below, I.xi.c.4 and I.xi.l.2.

[10 ]See below, I.xi.b.35, I.xi.l.12, and V.ii.k.54.

[d–d]along 1

[11 ]Cf. IV.ii.20, where Smith comments on the small quantity of corn imported into Britain even in times of scarcity.

[12 ]See below, I.xi.e.38, where Smith comments further on the high price of corn in Holland, and also IV.ix.37.

[13 ]‘When he [old Cato] was asked what was the most profitable feature of an estate, he replied: ‘Raising cattle successfully’. What next to that? ‘Raising cattle with fair success’. And next? ‘Raising cattle with but slight success’. And fourth? ‘Raising crops’. And when his questioner said, ‘How about money–lending? Cato replied: ‘How about murder?’ (Cicero, De Officiis, 11.xxv, translated by W. Miller in Loeb Classical Library (1921), 266–7.) Cicero’s authority is also cited in this connection in LJ (B) 297, ed. Cannan 229.

[14 ]See below, I.xi.k.1. Smith comments on the Roman distributions of corn and on the discouragement thereby given to agriculture at III.ii.21 and IV.vii.a.3. LRBL ii.157, ed. Lothian 150, refers to the method used by those men ‘who from their attachment to the populace were called Populares’, which was ‘to propose laws for the equall division of lands and the distributing of corn at the publick charge’. He cited Marius and Clodius as examples. Smith refers to the discouragement thus given to corn production in Rome in LJ (B) 296–7, ed. Cannan 229–30, and in ED 5.10 where the low level of corn output is attributed to the prohibition on its export, together with ‘the distributions which were annually made by the government of Sicilian, Egyptian, and African corn at a very low price to the people’.

[15 ]The high rent of enclosed land also reflected the considerable costs of enclosure.

[16 ]The same point is made at I.xi.l.9. It is doubtful if the relationship was so clear cut. T. S. Ashton summarised the position (An Economic History of England: the Eighteenth Century (London, 1955), 54–5): After 1700 the price of meat fell sharply and that of bread even more so, until 1708. In 1709–10 both bread and meat rose to famine levels, but from this time to 1740 there seems to have been relative stability of the ratio between the two. For the next quarter of a century, however, the price of meat was high compared with that of bread, for the losses of sheep in the early ’forties and middle ’fifties were serious, and—more important—the prolonged cattle plague forced up the price of beef. The years from 1766 to 1780 showed little alteration in the ratio.

[17 ]T. S. Birch, The Life of Henry Prince of Wales (London, 1760), 449.

[18 ]A Report from the Committee who, upon the 8th day of February, 1764, were appointed to inquire into the Causes of the High Price of Provisions with the proceedings of the House thereupon. House of Commons Journals, 29 (1761–64), 1046.

[19 ]Ibid. Mr. Capel Hanbury ‘confirmed this Evidence by the comparative Prices of his own Charge, in victualing his ships for Virginia, which he said he victualed in March, last year, at the Rate of 24 or 25 Shillings per Hundred Weight, Beef: Whereas he last Year gave 27 Shillings for the same Weight and Sort’.

[20 ]These prices are from the tables at the end of this chapter.

[21 ]It is pointed out at I.x.b.3 that as society advances ‘they are all very poor people who follow as a trade, what other people pursue as a pastime’.

[e–e]thorns 1

[22 ]‘This thorn–hedge cannot be destroyed unless you care to dig it up by the roots.’ (Columella, De Re Rustica, xi.3, translated by E. S. Forster and E. H. Heffner in Loeb Classical Library (1955), xi.1–8.)

[23 ]‘Now I shall speak of the enclosures which are constructed for the protection of the farm as a whole, or its divisions. There are four types of such defences: . . . The first type, the natural, is a hedge, usually planted with brush or thorn, having roots and being alive, and so with nothing to fear from the flaming torch of a mischievous passer–by.’ (Varro, De Re Rustica, i.xiv, translated by W. D. Hooper, and revised by H. B. Ash in Loeb Classical Library (1934), 216–17.) Cannan observes: ‘Gesnerus’ edition of Columella in Scriptores rei rusticae in Adam Smith’s library (see Bonar’s Catalogue, s.v. Gesnerus), commenting on the passage referred to above, quotes the opinions of Varro, De Re rustica, i.14, and Palladius, De Re rustica, i.34’.

[24 ]‘Most people would be doubtful [whether vines should be kept at all], to such an extent that many would avoid and dread such an ordering of their land, and would consider it preferable to own meadows and pastures, or woodland for cutting; for in the matter of ground planted with trees for the support of vines there has been no little dispute even among authorities.’ And later: ‘for like a careful accountant, he sees, when his calculations are made, that this kind of husbandry is of the greatest advantage to the estate.’ (Columella, De Re Rustica, iii.3 and 7, translated by H. B. Ash in Loeb Classical Library (1941), i.253 and 259.)

[25 ]Cf. V.ii.g.8.

[26 ]The Conseil du Roi passed a decree (arrêt) on 5 June 1731 at Fontainebleau. M. Antoine, Le Conseil du Roi sous le règne de Louis XV (Geneva, 1970), 479, n. In ED 3.5 Smith refers to the ‘French kings edict against planting new vineyards, and of some equally absurd laws of other nations’. Cf. Hume’s remarks on this policy in his essay ‘Of the Balance of Trade’, Essays Moral, Political and Literary, ed. Green and Grose, i.336.

[27 ]There was considerable alarm at the time through the loss of agricultural land to vineyards, especially since wheat prices in France rose for about half a century after 1730. Even a small deficiency in the crop could lead to a sharp rise in price and to bread riots.

[28 ]Smith had first–hand experience of Languedoc; a province which had attained such a degree of prosperity at the time of Smith’s visit that it was said to have enjoyed a superior credit rating to that of the central government of France. Rae, Life, 184. In Letter 83 addressed to Hume, dated 21 October 1764, Smith indicated that he proposed to ‘go to see the meeting of the States of Longuedoc, at Montpelier’ and asked for an introduction to the Intendant there. See below, I.xi.e.13n.

[29 ]The term ‘effectual demand’ is defined above, I.vii.8. Smith discusses the demand for the products of particularly favoured vineyards at I.vii.24 and V.ii.k.54.

[30 ]See below, III.ii.10, regarding the high profits of sugar plantations, and also IV.vii.b.31.

[ff* ]Voyages d’un Philosophe.f [‘The white sugar of the best quality is generally sold at the port of Faifo, in exchange for other merchandize, at the rate of three piastres (about fourteen shillings) the Cochin–china quintal, which weighs from one hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds French.’ Translated as P. Poivre, Travels of a Philosopher, or, Observations on the Manners and Arts of Various Nations in Africa and Asia (Glasgow, 1790), 121–2.]

[31 ]In Letter 258 addressed to Sir John Sinclair, dated 11 April 1786, Smith stated that when he lived in Glasgow ‘a hoghead of Muscovado Sugar’ was valued at 30 to 36 shillings per cwt. and that his usual purchase was ‘breakfast sugar’ at 8–9d. per lb.

[g–g]om. 6

[h–h]most 6

[32 ]See below, IV.vii.c.17.

[33 ]Prohibited in England, Ireland, and the Channel Islands by 12 Charles II, c. 34 (1660) and in Scotland by 22 George III, c. 73 (1782). See below, IV.vii.b.45.

[34 ]William Douglass, A Summary, Historical and Political, of the First Planting, Progressive Improvements and Present State of the British Settlements in North America (London, 1760), ii.360.

[i *i]Douglas’s Summary, vol. ii., p. 372, 373.i [Virginia and Maryland sometimes produce more tobacco than they can vent to advantage, by glutting the markets. (Note: This is sometimes the case with the Dutch East–India spices, and the West–India sugars.) William Douglass, A Summary, ii.372–3.]

[35 ]This example is also given at IV.v.b.4 and IV.vii.c.101. Pufendorf also cites the example of the modern Dutch who were said to ‘destroy the clove and nutmeg plants in many sections of India in order to prevent an over–supply of those spices.’ Pufendorf also pointed out that the Egyptians had kept up the price of papyrus in the same way. De Jure, V.i.6, translated by C. H. and W. A. Oldfather, Classics of International Law (Oxford, 1934).

[36 ]Below, I.xi.l.12, and above, I.xi.b.9.

[37 ]See below, I.xi.g.28.

[38 ]See above, I.vi.19.

[39 ]See above, I.viii.33.

[40 ]Potatoes are described as not ‘very much esteemed’ in Europe at IV.vii.a.12, but as one of the most important improvements in European agriculture at I.xi.n.10.

[41 ]Smith suggests that meat is not strictly speaking a necessity at V.ii.k.15. He believed that grain supplemented by vegetables could afford a most ‘invigorating diet’. See also I.xi.e.29 and I.xi.n.10.

[ff* ]Voyages d’un Philosophe.f [‘The white sugar of the best quality is generally sold at the port of Faifo, in exchange for other merchandize, at the rate of three piastres (about fourteen shillings) the Cochin–china quintal, which weighs from one hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds French.’ Translated as P. Poivre, Travels of a Philosopher, or, Observations on the Manners and Arts of Various Nations in Africa and Asia (Glasgow, 1790), 121–2.]

[i *i]Douglas’s Summary, vol. ii., p. 372, 373.i [Virginia and Maryland sometimes produce more tobacco than they can vent to advantage, by glutting the markets. (Note: This is sometimes the case with the Dutch East–India spices, and the West–India sugars.) William Douglass, A Summary, ii.372–3.]

[f]2–6

[i]2–6