tigation of the subject will
show us how essentially different the high price of raw produce is, both
in its nature and origin, and the laws by which it is governed, from the
high price of a common monopoly.

The causes of the high price of raw produce may be stated to be three.

First, and mainly, that quality of the earth, by which it can be made to
yield a greater portion of the necessaries of life than is required for
the maintenance of the persons employed on the land.

Secondly, that quality peculiar to the necessaries of life of being
able to create their own demand, or to raise up a number of demanders in
proportion to the quantity of necessaries produced.

And, thirdly, the comparative scarcity of the most fertile land.

The qualities of the soil and of its products, here noticed as the
primary causes of the high price of raw produce, are the gifts of
nature to man. They are quite unconnected with monopoly, and yet are
so absolutely essential to the existence of rent, that without them, no
degree of scarcity or monopoly could have occasioned that excess of the
price of raw produce, above the cost of production, which shows itself
in this form.

If, for instance, the soil of the earth had been such, that, however
well directed might have been the industry of man, he could not have
produced from it more than was barely sufficient to maintain those,
whose labour and attention were necessary to its products; though, in
this case, food and raw materials would have been evidently scarcer
than at present, and the land might have been, in the same manner,
monopolized by particular owners; vet it is quite clear, that neither
rent, nor any essential surplus produce of the land in the form of high
profits, could have existed.

It is equally clear, that if the necessaries of life the most important
products of land--had not the property of creating an increase of demand
proportioned to their increased quantity, such increased quantity would
occasion a fall in their exchangeable value. However abundant might be
the produce of a country, its population might remain stationary And
this abundance, without a proportionate demand, and with a very high
corn price of labour, which would naturally take place under these
circumstances, might reduce the price of raw produce, like the price of
manufactures, to the cost of production.

It has been sometimes argued, that it is mistaking the principle of
population, to imagine,