conversely; and this because, though masters of their own subjects, they have not also mastered the laws of thought. Moreover, induction and deduction are apt to blend into each other with as much transient delicacy and finesse as do the colours of the rainbow.

Dr. Whewell's prefatory notice teems with such instances; for it never takes into account that no one general principle can suffice to explain all the facts which are mixed up with it in the concrete. A general principle, if true, is doubtless applicable to all details; but its application must constantly vary with the various circumstances with which it comes in contact. Take a bit of gold, spread it over a piece of tinfoil, or melt it up with a mass of copper, and how varied is the result-each differs from the other, and both from the piece of gold. So, again, while the definition of the Abstract Circle is always the same, the dimensions of Circles in the Concrete vary without limit.

Thus, in the concrete, rent is always mixed up with other matters, and is usually disfigured, if we may so say, by profit. If, a hundred years ago, a fence was put up or manure thrown in, the profit upon that expenditure was called rent. But rent, in its essence, is the measure of the difference between the natural capacity of the land paying that rent, and the natural capacity of the worst land which the exciting prices make it worth while to bring into cultivation. Many things may in practice intervene to interrupt the action of this law. pay a higher rent for a farm in were bred; or, when he has cast be willing to spend surplus capital on it in any way which will repay him a surplus profit, however small, beyond the value of risk, or the interest which he must pay for the capital, if borrowed. Irregularities like these we must expect; for no theories can embrace all the complications of casual circumstance.

The farmer may be willing to a locality where his forefathers his lot in a farm, he will often

As regards the objection to Ricardo, that his principle involves an opposition between the landlord and other classes; in one point of view, looking at the phenomena proximately there is an opposition, but in the higher generalization the opposition disappears; for, largely considered, it is the interest of the landlord to obtain

the greatest profit out of the best land, as much as out of those worst lands which are a measure of the point at which cultivation is possible. It is clear, as Mill shows, that rent does not form part of the expenses of production. Good land is a superior instrument as compared with bad. Supposing, says Mill, a manufacturer to rent a steam-engine of superior power, the rent would not be properly an addition to his outlay, inasmuch as in its use he would save the equivalent of what it cost him in his other expenses.

The principle applicable to rent is only a case of a more general principle, that all commodities which are susceptible of indefinite multiplication, but not without increase of cost, receive a value proportioned to the cost of production in the most unfavourable existing circumstances. In the price given for a potato, however temporarily affected by the law of demand and supply, the average and constant value is proportioned to the value of a potato grown with the minimum of profit. On the whole, then, that "the payment which the cultivator makes for the use of land, cannot be described by any single definition from which its amount can be deduced" (to use Dr. Whewell's own words-Preface, p. x.), is no more an objection to definition, than the circumstance that arithmetic does not constitute wealth, or that an accountant is not a merchant is an objection to using arithmetic and accountants. Surely the tribute of respect to Ude or Chevet is not the less because the material basis of the feast is supplied by the wealth of the host; so generalizations cannot indeed furnish us with concrete facts, yet are they ticketed shelves on which, as in a museum, we place them. Thus, a man with a copious range of generalizations is so much the more likely to outshine the man who has them not (and this, too, even in the knowledge of concrete details), as the man who has a large storehouse is more likely to seek for things to put in it than he who has none.

Thus, men are not even invited to the accumulation of details, unless they have pegs whereon to hang them when obtained; so that, were a man's memory full of the concrete facts of rent, his

knowledge will be but inert—it will only oppress him unless he can by sheer thought distil their essential spirit. But, as close thought and close observation are seldom united in one man, he had better resort to the generalizations of the master-spirits who are the glory of our race. Men like Ricardo or Mill afford the leverage by which one concrete fact may be welded into another. Facts, as such, are barren; it is not till we break their husk and find the kernel that we discover their hidden energies.

With these views of economical science the analogies of physical science coincide. Dr. Whewell (p. xvi., Preface) urges, indeed, that as the force of gravitation is constantly counteracted by such facts as those evinced by the cohesion of rocks, tenacity of ice, and so on; so also the tenure of cultivation is determined by many other circumstances than those connected with mobility of capital. True, the action of gravitation is counteracted, yet the law remains. True, the action of Ricardo's theory is interrupted, but its force survives intact; for, remove the opposite tendencies, which are the casual perturbations of a great law, and it is then seen in its majesty, with a constancy and universality within the area of its rule, as marked as that with which the dome of St. Paul's at a little distance towers over the roofs which obscure a nearer view.

Lastly, all the forces and attractions which perturb for a while our evidence of the action of such great principles as Newton's gravitation, or Ricardo's theory of rent, also counteract each other, and this with an increasing tendency, as the observations from which we obtain our averages are extended, till at length they practically neutralize each other. And it will be found that each varying system of actual rent (as distinguished from mere tenures and joint-proprietorships), however much they differ among themselves, pay some tribute to the theory of Ricardo.

Indeed, on the theory of rent propounded by Mr. Jones and Dr. Whewell, the political economist would become a mere landsurveyor; since, in the concrete, not only all the peculiarities of the metayer, the serf, cottier, and the ryot, become important, but also the terms of each separate man's personal holding.

Where, then, is the subordination of general principles to mere details to stop? Surely there must be some point at which we must pause and analyse our records of fact, if we wish to escape the fate of a botanist, who was so fond of collecting that he died before he had time to learn the structure of a single specimen.

It is obvious that the theory of Ricardo pre-assumes, as a condition, such freedom on the part of the tenant. Mere dead force, despotism, or custom, cannot create a tenancy of which competition for holding can be an incident. What is the position of the serfs? In return for a certain amount of labour to be bestowed on the soil, these men are allowed a certain share of the estate for their own subsistence, Mr. Jones admits that they are not unfrequently found in a state of personal slavery (p. 198); that the state of bondage and dependence in which they exist to their lords (a condition incident to a rude population, in times of scarcity obtaining a bare subsistence), places them in a position in which, struggling for life, they can be scarcely termed tenants in a commercial sense, any more than the brutes which aid their labour.

Take the case of the ryots, the hereditary occupiers of the East. These men Mr. Jones admits to be at the mercy of their sovereign, and any exercise of his right might push them to starvation, &c. (Jones, p. 457 and p. 211); and he sees in this state of things the main cause of the subordination which makes it possible for a foreign government to rule a distant people (and we would add, perish our rule rather than it should become an eventual check to the civilisation of our Indian subjects). Here, again, there is nothing analogous to that sort of tenancy which Ricardo's theory embraces; for the ryots are a race of labourers on the soil of the State, upon whose sense of justice, rather than on any rights which they can themselves enforce, they repose. Is this, then, a legitimate tenancy?

The metayer (p. 202, Jones) is a peasant-tenant, extracting his own wages or subsistence from the soil, and paying a producerent to its owner. Thus, he occupies a grade between men like serfs and ryots, and the cottier and farming-tenant. The

fixed and languid condition of this tenure it is not hard to explain. In the first place, it would seem to be a tenure involving some perpetuity of interest in the descendants both of the owner and the metayer, each with claims sufficiently vague and indeterminate to prevent the stimulus to high exertion, and without that element of easy transfer of the land to new cultivators, which would introduce the life and energy of competition into the lethargic reign of custom.

The cottier system does involve competition; and, when the land is not at a monopoly value, the Ricardo definition of rent is seen at once to apply; in other words, the meanest cottage which pays some rent would be a guide to a landlord demanding a rent for his newly built one. Here, however, the principle of population is brought to act directly upon land, and not, as in England, upon capital; for the demand of land depends on the number of competitors, and here these consist of the whole rural population; and the rent being regulated by competition, and land thus obtaining a monopoly value, the principle of ascertaining the rent from the principle of the superior value of the land itself, becomes absorbed in the yet earlier principle of supply and demand.

Howver, the cottier and metayer rents do afford some indications of the universality of the theory of Ricardo—that is, as soon as the owners and cultivators of land are placed on some ground of equality of contracting power, this equality of contracting power being necessary to prevent the constant injustice done to the cultivators of the soil, an injustice never remedied till the capitalist farmer, able to bide his time and being at the mercy of nobody, enters the scene.

England is a hothouse for the creation of capital when compared with other countries; but, compared with his ideal, Mr. Jones well notes her deficiencies. He sees a large number of agriculturalists waiting for employment, which does not exist for them at the country workshop; while he rates, at a very small proportion, the numbers of these employed in the great manufactories. These complaints are scarcely pertinent now, while railways and improved communications are constantly tending to