From what we have said, it follows that the rent of the land of a country is equal at least to the sum of all the differences between the product of the least productive portions of capital which have been necessarily laid out in the cultivation of the soil and the product of the other portions more productively laid out by other husbandmen. It may rise higher than this on account of a coalition among landowners or immoderate competition among farmers, who may thereby be forced to surrender a portion of their wages and interest on capital to the former; but it can never lastingly fall below this amount. If the landowners themselves were to surrender all claim to rent, the price of agricultural products would not sink if the market was kept fully supplied; and the excess obtained from the better land over and above the cost of production would go, but only in the nature of a gift, to the farmers, corn dealers and individual consumers.[152-1] Normal rent is not to be explained by any mysterious or peculiar productiveness[152-2] of the land that yields it, but on the contrary, by the fact that even material forces unexhaustible in themselves, but which can be productive only in combination with given parcels of land, uniformly oppose even successively greater difficulties to every successive and additional improvement.[152-3] Moreover, the capital which becomes a part of the land to such an extent that it cannot be separated from it, and perhaps not even distinguished from it at sight, such for instance as has been laid out for purposes of drainage or in the purchase of material intended to modify the nature of the soil, partakes of the character of the land itself, and its yield obeys the laws of rent. How frequently it happens that such improvements made by the farmer without the least assistance from the owner of the land permanently contribute to an increase of the rent. (§ 181.)[152-4] [Footnote 152-1: Compare _J. Anderson_, An Inquiry into the Nature of the Corn Laws, 1777. Extracts from the same in the Edinburgh Review, LIV, 91 ff. On the other hand, _Buchanan_, on Adam Smith, IV, 134, thinks that rent arises exclusively from the monopoly of the owners, and that without it the price of corn would be lower. It is certain, however, that if the land of a country be considered as one great piece of property, and under one great system of husbandry, the products of the soil might be offered permanently at a price corresponding to the average cost of production, on the better and worse pieces of land. (_Umpfenback_, N. Oek., 191.)] [Footnote 152-2: _Malthus_, On the Policy of restricting the Importation of foreign Corn, 1815. Additions, 1817, to the Essay on the Principle of Population, III, ch. 8-12; Principles, 217 ff.]