empted to explain by what means the
supply of food was limited. He taught that men always commenced the work
of cultivation on the most fertile soils, capable of yielding, say, one
hundred quarters for a given quantity of labor; but that as population
increased, it became necessary to resort to poorer soils, yielding but
ninety quarters, and that then the owner of the first could command as
rent ten quarters. With a further increase, lands of a third quality,
yielding but eighty quarters, were brought into use, and then the first
and second would command as rent the whole difference, say, twenty
quarters for the first, and ten quarters for the second. The payment of
rent is thus regarded, in this school, as an evidence of constantly
diminishing reward of labor, resulting from the increase of population
in consequence of which it is necessary to extend the area of
cultivation. With each step of its progress, the owner of the land takes
a larger proportion of this constantly decreasing product, leaving a
smaller one to be divided among those who apply either labor or capital
to cultivation, thus producing a constant increase in the _inequality_
of human condition. The interests of the landlord are in this manner
shown to be for ever opposed to those of all the other portions of
society. Rent is supposed to be paid because land has been occupied in
virtue of an exercise of power and not because the owners have done any
thing to entitle them to it. Here we see the germ of that discord which
everywhere in Europe exists between the payers and receivers of rent.
The annual fund from which savings can be made is held to be continually
diminishing, the poor becoming poorer as the rich grow richer. The
tendency to increase is more powerful in population than in capital, and
the natural result must be that "wages will be reduced so low that a
portion of the population will regularly die of want."[25]

The effect of the promulgation of these principles, upon the science of
which they were asserted to be the basis, was curious. It was clear that
increase of population led to famine. It was equally clear that increase
of wealth tended to the extension of cultivation over inferior soils,
with constantly decreasing returns to labor. Nevertheless, the political
economist was everywhere surrounded by facts showing that the condition
of man improved as numbers increased, and as cultivation was extended.
With lessened rewards of toil there