An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of NationsSmith, Adam
History
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Smith, Adam
Economics
The most desert 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 the 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.
The rent of land not only varies with its fertility, whatever be its
produce, but with its situation, whatever be its fertility. 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 profit, as has
already been shewn, is generally higher than in the neighbourhood of a
large town. A smaller proportion of this diminished surplus, therefore,
must belong to the landlord.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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