Land of an inferior quality requires a great quantity of capital to make it yield a given produce; and, if the actual price of this produce be not such as fully to compensate the cost of production, including the existing rate of profits, the land must remain uncultivated. It matters not whether this compensation is effected by an increase in the money price of raw produce, without a proportionate increase in the money price of the instruments of production, or by a decrease in the price of the instruments of production, without a proportionate decrease in the price of produce. What is absolutely necessary, is a greater relative cheapness of the instruments of production, to make up for the quantity of them required to obtain a given produce from poor land. But whenever, by the operation of one or more of the causes before mentioned, the instruments of production become cheaper, and the difference between the price of produce and the expenses of cultivation increases, rents naturally rise. It follows therefore as a direct and necessary consequence, that it can never answer to take fresh land of a poorer quality into cultivation, till rents have risen or would allow of a rise, on what is already cultivated. It is equally true, that without the same tendency to a rise of rents, occasioned by the operation of the same causes, it cannot answer to lay out fresh capital in the improvement of old land--at least upon the supposition, that each farm is already furnished with as much capital as can be laid out to advantage, according to the actual rate of profits. It is only necessary to state this proposition to make its truth appear. It certainly may happen, and I fear it happens frequently, that farmers are not provided with all the capital which could be employed upon their farms, at the actual rate of agricultural profits. But supposing they are so provided, it implies distinctly, that more could not be applied without loss, till, by the operation of one or more of the causes above enumerated, rents had tended to rise. It appears then, that the power of extending cultivation and increasing produce, both by the cultivation of fresh land and the improvement of the old, depends entirely upon the existence of such prices, compared with the expense of production, as would raise rents in the actual state of cultivation.