(e) Land-parcels becoming valuable in the way but just now indicated, and so long as they continue valuable, that is, salable, are technically _Commodities_, according to our triple division of all Valuables. They belong in this grand division, that we are specially studying in this chapter, for the same reason as a horse does or a steam-engine does. Men did not originally make the land as a congeries of matter, neither do men make horses, nor do they make the iron ore out of which most parts of the steam-engine is made; but men do modify bits of the land as God made it, they subdue it, they improve it in manifold ways, they make it _desirable_ in the eyes of other men, and thus or otherwise they come into possession of it, gain for themselves a right to sell it, prepare it to be sold and sell it, on the same principle as men raise and break and train horses and prepare them to be sold and sell them, and just as men by many processes transform the iron ore into a steam-engine and sell that. Ricardo, in his famous doctrine of Rent, says a good deal about "the original and indestructible powers of the soil"; but as a matter of fact, _there are no such powers_, since the elements and properties that constitute land are all the time changing under chemical and other action; and even if there were such powers, it would still be impossible to separate what God did for the land from what men have done in order to fit it to be sold; and what men have ever been authorized to take pay from other men for what God did in the creation of the world? The simple truth is, that Value is never of God's creation but only of men's exertion. There never was any land anywhere fit for cultivation and sale without more or less expenditure of human labor and reserved capital upon it; and the "powers" of the land, whatever they are, instead of being "indestructible," are in a constant process of wearing out, and require a constant application of labor and capital to keep up their fertility. Valuable pieces of land, accordingly, like all other commodities, derive their _utility_ partly from the free contribution of Nature, and partly from the onerous contribution of men; but, on the other hand, they derive their _value_, whether the value be then increasing or diminishing, wholly from human desires and corresponding efforts.