It represents anterior services,—the clearing away of trees and stones, draining, enclosing, levelling, manuring, building: it demands the recompense of these services. But that recompense is not regulated with reference to the labour which has been actually performed. The landed proprietor does not say. “Give me in exchange for this land as much labour as it has received from me.” (But he would so express himself if, according to Adam Smith’s theory, value came from labour, and were proportional to it.) Much less does he say, as Ricardo and a number of economists suppose, “Give me first of all as much labour as this land has had bestowed upon it, and a certain amount of labour over and above, as an equivalent for the natural and inherent powers of the soil.” No, the proprietor, who represents all the possessors of the land who have preceded him, up to those who made the first clearance, is obliged, in their name, to hold this humble language:— “We have prepared services, and what we ask is to exchange these for equivalent services. We worked hard formerly, for in our days we were not acquainted with your powerful means of execution—there were no roads—we were forced to do everything by muscular exertion. Much sweat and toil, many human lives, are buried under these furrows. But we do not expect from you [p179] labour for labour—we have no means of effecting an exchange on those terms. We are quite aware that the labour bestowed on land now-a-days, whether in this country or abroad, is much more perfect and much more productive than formerly. All that we ask, and what you clearly cannot refuse us, is that our anterior labour and the new labour shall be exchanged, not in proportion to their comparative duration and intensity, but proportionally to their results, so that we may both receive the same remuneration for the same service. By this arrangement we are losers as regards labour, seeing that three or four times more of ours than of yours is required to accomplish the same service; but we have no choice, and can no longer effect the exchange on any other terms.” And, in point of fact, this represents the actual state of things. If we could form an exact estimate of the amount of efforts, of incessant labour, and toil, expended in bringing each acre of our land to its present state of productiveness, we should be thoroughly convinced that the man who purchases that land does not give labour for labour—at least in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred. I add this qualification, because we must not forget that an ‹incorporated service› may gain value as well as lose it. And although the general tendency be towards depreciation, nevertheless the opposite phenomenon manifests itself sometimes, in exceptional circumstances, as well in the case of land as of anything else, and this without violating the law of justice, or affording adequate cause for the cry of monopoly.