The Private Ownership of Land [pp. 125-147]

THE PRINCE TON REVIEW.
What is the true interpretation of these facts? Every one
who made an outlay in the improvement of a farm knew well
that the cultivator could not afford to pay a rent of more than
two dollars. Yet the interest of the investment was five dollars.
per annum. Evidently the transaction had no reference to
interest, but had for its object the acquisition of the land as a
permanent possession. This was the only consideration which
could have induced any one to make the outlay. The assured
possession and use of the land for all the future, and this only,
was regarded as an adequate compensation for it. When the
investment had been made, the land-owners did not demand in
the form of rent interest for their capital, for they knew well
they could not get it; but only such rent as in the present state
of the market they could get. The rent they could get sustained no fixed relation either to the cost of improving the,
farm or to the current rate of interest, but depended, just as.
in England at the present day, on the quantity of agricultural
products the farm would yield, and on their price in the market.
The consideration received for use was therefore from the
first, not interest-to which it sustained no more relation than
the price of a lady's bonnet does to its cost after the fashion
has changed-but rent in the strictest sense of that term. All
land does then, in direct contradiction of Ricardo's theory, bear
rent as soon as it is cultivated, and the rate of rent depends at
the very beginning of cultivation on the same factors as in the
ripest stage of agriculture.
It is fundamental to a right understanding of the case, that
we should distinctly recognize the'truth that the permanent
possession of the land is the only motive which is sufficient to
induce men to prepare land for cultivation. Had the notions
of some recent levellers prevailed in this country a hundred
years ago and onwards, the fertile upper Mississippi valley
would have been for the most part a wilderness till this day.
It would have fared just as the lands held in common by Indian
tribes have fared, remaining little tracts of wilderness in the midst
of cultivation. It was a single consideration which put vigor
into the arms of the hardy pioneers who felled the forests Qf
Ohio and Indiana; that consideration was the inspiring thought
that the land belonged to them and their children forever.
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