To them, rent does not mean, as by derivation, simply produce or profit; nor, as to a Frenchman now and to Bailie Nicol Jarvie in his days, interest on a debt. It means a certain price paid to a landlord for the use of his land. But such a definition is too wide. It might include the proceeds of a monopoly, or an interest on capital, or a Government tax, or a legal rate, or a toll, or a payment for service rendered. We must define the term a little more clearly. There is a certain portion of a landlord’s income and of a peasant proprietor’s earnings that has an origin and character distinct from the rest, and demands the economist’s separate attention, whether it alone receives the name of rent or not;—this is, the excess of the produce of land beyond the cost of production and the current rate of profits. Represent these in money; and suppose the current profit five per cent. Suppose that a tenant lays out £500 on his farm, and gets by the harvest and farm produce not only £500 plus £25, but £600; the additional £75, which would if retained by him be over or extra profits as compared with the rate usual among farmers and men of like business, is the value of his rent; and the landlord can take that from him without impoverishing him. Rent is that portion of the produce which remains, after all the outlay of the cultivator has been repaid him together with the current profits. From accidental or temporary causes the money rents of land may be more or less than this; but this is the point to which actual rents will gravitate.[519] So far as this account goes, it might seem that Malthus’ description is too general; it would include the extra profits, for example, of any monopoly or a royalty for the use of a patent; and Ricardo’s definition, “the price paid for the indestructible powers of the soil,” might seem more definite. But Malthus is rather too specific than too general. He is thinking of agricultural land only, and that mainly as producing food for man. If his description of the Nature of rent adds little to that of Adam Smith,[520] his account of its Causes, which he himself was the first to grasp, is characteristic and peculiar.