Malthus believed himself to have included, in this theory of rent, what truth there was in the view of the French economists and of Adam Smith, when they spoke of rent as due to the qualities of the soil and not to an ordinary monopoly. His contemporaries admitted him to have been the first clear expounder of the subject. But his most eminent brother economist found general agreement quite consistent with emphatic divergence in details,[534] not wonderful in a writer who regarded every economical question as a particular case of the problem of value rather than of wealth. Ricardo admits that his own theory of rent is simply a farther development of the Malthusian. In an essay on _The Influence of a low price of Corn on the Profits of Stock, showing the inexpediency of Restrictions on Importation_ (1815),[535] published in answer to the two tracts of Malthus above mentioned, he makes this quite clear, and, unlike his disciples, is warm in praise of his rival’s powers as an economist.[536] He agrees with the definition (of the _Tract on Rent_) that rent is “that portion of the value of the whole produce which remains to the owner after all the outgoings belonging to its cultivation have been paid,” including an ordinary rate of profits for the employed.[537] But, whereas Malthus regards rent as increased by whatever lessens the outgoings in any shape or form, Ricardo considers that can happen in one way only, namely, by the increased cost of raising the last part of the necessary supplies. Arithmetically it was clear that, if you had four items making up the total expense of cultivation, whatever reduced any one of the items _pro tanto_ reduced the total.[538] Accordingly, Malthus said that rent could be increased by such an accumulation of capital as will lower the profits of stock,—such an increase of population as will lower the wages of labour,—such agricultural improvements or such increase of the cultivator’s exertions as will diminish the number of labourers needed,—or such an increase in the prices of produce from increased demand as will increase the difference between the expense of production and the price of produce.[539] Ricardo, on the other hand, says that profits can never be reduced by mere accumulation of capital or competition of capitals, but only by the progressively less fruitful character of the investments to be found for capital as accumulation goes on. As long as there is fertile land to be had, yielding a rich return to capital, no one will accept a poor return. “If in the progress of countries in wealth and population new portions of fertile land can be added to such countries with every increase of capital, profits would never fall nor rents rise.”[540] In things as they are, capital soon accumulates beyond the rich investments and has to take the poorer. Sooner or later, even in a new colony, a point is reached where fertile land will not supply food enough for the