And all the world is not only asserting this truth every day, but is also acting on it; for these extra loaves, produced by the qualities peculiar to superior soils, are neither more nor less than Rent. Rent is the amount of produce which a given amount of exertion obtains from rich land, beyond what it obtains from poor land. Such is the account of rent in which all economists agree; indeed, when once it is understood, the truth of it is self-evident. Mr. Henry George’s entire doctrines are built on it; whilst Mill calls it the _pons asinorum_ of economics. I have added nothing in the above statement of it to what is stated by all economists, except weight and emphasis to a truth which they do not so much state as imply, and whose importance they seem to have overlooked. This truth is like a note on a piano, which they have all of them sounded lightly amongst other notes. I have sounded it by itself, and have emphasised it with the loud pedal—the truth that rent is for all practical purposes not the product of Land and Human Exertion combined, but the product of Land solely, as separate from Human Exertion and distinct from it. [Sidenote ◆1 The above doctrine of Rent is not a landlord’s doctrine. It would hold true of a Socialistic State as well as of any other.] ◆¹ And here let me pause for a moment to point out a fact which, though it illustrates the above truth further, I should not mention here if it were not for the following reason. Rent forms the subject of so much social and party prejudice that what I have just been urging may be received by certain readers with suspicion, and regarded as some special pleading on behalf of landlords. I wish therefore to point out clearly that the existence of rent and the payment of rent is not peculiar to our existing system of landlordism. Rent must arise, under any social arrangement, from all soils which are better than the poorest soil cultivated: it must be necessarily paid to somebody; and that somebody must necessarily be the owner. If a peer or a squire is the owner, it is paid to the peer or squire; if the cultivator is the owner, the cultivator pays it to himself; if the land were nationalised and the State were to become the owner, the cultivator would have to pay it away to the State. [Sidenote ◆1 It is easy to see how Rent arises, under any conditions, from all superior soils.]