[Footnote 148-2: Among the greatest services rendered by _Adam Smith_ is, his complete demonstration, that any income may be resolved into one or more of the three great branches of the national income. (I, ch. 6.)] [Footnote 148-3: _Ricardo_ has not unfrequently bewildered uncritical readers, by his habit--in which he is by no means always consistent--of using the expressions higher and lower wages, higher and lower profit of capital, to designate not the absolute greatness of these branches of income, either in money or in the wants of life, nor their greatness from a personal point of view, but only their relative greatness as compared with the aggregate income, the measure of the quota of the aggregate product which is divided among workmen, capitalists, etc. And yet, in the case of most economic questions, this is without doubt the less interesting side. Compare the polemic of _R. Jones_, On the Distribution of Wealth, 1831, I, 288 ff.; _Senior_, Outlines, 142 seq.; _Carey_, On the Rate of Wages, 1834, 24. Thus, according to _Ricardo_, the increase of one branch is possible only at the expense of another, while in the case of flourishing nations, the three branches increase absolutely and together. _Ricardo_, himself, was by no means unacquainted with this, as may be seen from _Baumstark's_ German translation of his work, pp. 37, 108 ff.] CHAPTER II. THE RENT OF LAND. SECTION CXLIX. THEORY OF RENT. Rent is that portion of the regular net product of a piece of land which remains after deducting the wages of labor and the interest on the capital usual in the country, incorporated into it.[149-1] Hence it is the price paid for the using of the land itself, or for what Ricardo calls the original inexhaustible forces of the soil which are capable of being appropriated.[149-2] This price also depends, of course, on the relation between demand and supply; the demand in turn, on the wants and means of payment of buyers, but the supply by no means on cost of production, which, from the definitions above given, is here unthinkable. However, land has this in common with other means of production, that its price is mainly determined by that of its products.