But this form of Capital, as well as all other forms of the same, is perpetually wearing out, that is to say, is gradually losing its power to contribute as at first to the present and future processes of production. This loss is in the very nature of things,--in the very nature of all Capital. The great Father never intended that His children should cease from work. He has ordered all things so, that they cannot cease from work, and continue to live in any comfort and progress. Value, as we have already thoroughly learned, is not a quality that can be put into anything _to stay there_: it is a recurring relation of mutual services between man and man; and each of these services of the three kinds involves recurring Efforts. Capital is a form of Value; and, consequently, it cannot possibly take on a shape not subject to the _law of diminishing returns_. This is deductive proof. And precisely the same result is reached by Induction. Men have noticed and recorded the fact at all times, and have made provision for it in their pecuniary calculations, that tools and machinery need to be repaired and then replaced, that the current interest on moneyed capital tends to decline from generation to generation in all progressive countries, and also that lands and other forms of real estate so lose their productive and rental power unless cared for in renovation that men migrate and emigrate in consequence. How much Rent shall the tenant pay to the landlord for the present use of the latter's old lands? Or in other words, how much shall be added to the going price of the product on account of the diminishing return due for the use of the old landed capital? This is a hard question to answer: probably the hardest question that is ever asked in practical Economics. Mr. Gladstone wrestled with it as complicated with a larger political question in passing the Irish Land Bill of 1881. Another honest athlete, Mr. Parnell, wrestled with it upon the same parliamentary arena. Scores of able and practical statesmen in Great Britain, and elsewhere, have struggled to reach a practical answer to this question; and scores of able and theoretical economists in all countries have striven to reach a theoretical answer to it. Most of these answers have been inharmonious, and many of them contradictory, with each other. The Land Bill of 1881 created a parliamentary Commission, whose duty and authority it was, to visit the Irish counties in person, to gain information in detail, to take sworn testimony of all the parties concerned, and then to lift or lower rents according to their discretion. The discontent of the Irish tenants in general was considerably mollified by the action of this Commission; while the debates and wrangles of the parliamentary session of 1889, and the persistent agitations for Home Rule (an agitation at once political and economical), show that the results of the work of that Commission were not wholly satisfactory.