Adam Smith, however, maintains that the proportion which falls to the landlord would be increased by a diminished cost of production, and therefore, that he would receive a larger share as well as a larger quantity, from an abundant than from a scanty produce. "A rice field," he says, "produces a much greater quantity of food than the most fertile corn field. Two crops in the year, from thirty to sixty bushels each, are said to be the ordinary produce of an acre. Though its cultivation therefore requires more labour, a much greater surplus remains after maintaining all that labour. In those rice countries therefore, where rice is the common and favourite vegetable food of the people, and where the cultivators are chiefly maintained with it, _a greater share of this greater surplus should belong to the landlord than in corn countries_." Mr. Buchanan also remarks, that "it is quite clear, that if any other produce which the land yielded more abundantly than corn, were to become the common food of the people, the rent of the landlord would be improved in proportion to its greater abundance." If potatoes were to become the common food of the people, there would be a long interval during which the landlords would suffer an enormous deduction of rent. They would not probably receive nearly so much of the sustenance of man as they now receive, while that sustenance would fall to a third of its present value. But all manufactured commodities, on which a part of the landlord's rent is expended, would suffer no other fall than that which proceeded from the fall in the raw material of which they were made, and which would arise only from the greater fertility of the land, which might then be devoted to its production. When from the progress of population, land of the same quality as before should be taken into cultivation, to produce the food required, and the same number of men should be employed in producing it, the landlord would have not only the same proportion of the produce as before, but that proportion would also be of the same value as before. Rent then would be the same as before; profits, however, would be much higher, because the price of food, and consequently of wages, would be much lower. High profits are favourable to the accumulation of capital. The demand for labour would further increase, and landlords would be permanently benefited by the increased demand for land.