is best to devote it to the former purpose, but it is very good evidence, and it should be allowed to prevail unless it is demonstrably outweighed, as it possibly might often be, by considerations of a different kind. That it would not be well for the community to employ land in the city of London for corn-growing purposes, however desirable might be a revival of home agriculture, is so obvious that it may seem to have no bearing on the present issue. But it is only an extreme indication of the absurd and wasteful use of our natural resources, which would grow up slowly but surely, if we dispensed with ideas of rent and price as sordid irrelevancies, and allocated our land on the basis of a balancing of the loftiest arguments of a vague and sentimental character. If you are prepared for the distribution of land to become stereotyped, for each piece to continue indefinitely in its present use, then indeed you might dispense with rent, as primitive societies very largely do. That would mean stagnation and, for an industrial country, decay. But if changes are ever to be contemplated, a simple quantitative measure is the only safeguard against utter chaos. Thus rent, like interest, will be found indispensable as a measure under any efficient system of society, even if it might not always represent the payment of sums of money to private individuals. And that is why the principles governing rent possess, as I indicated at the outset of this chapter, an importance more fundamental than our present system of ownership and tenure.