A thing which is limited in quantity, even though its possessors do not act in concert, is still a monopolized article. But even when monopolized, a thing which is the gift of nature, and requires no labor or outlay as the condition of its existence, will, if there be competition among the holders of it, command a price only if it exist in less quantity than the demand. If the whole land of a country were required for cultivation, all of it might yield a rent. But in no country of any extent do the wants of the population require that all the land, which is capable of cultivation, should be cultivated. The food and other agricultural produce which the people need, and which they are willing and able to pay for at a price which remunerates the grower, may always be obtained without cultivating all the land; sometimes without cultivating more than a small part of it; the more fertile lands, or those in the more convenient situations, being of course preferred. There is always, therefore, some land which can not, in existing circumstances, pay any rent; and no land ever pays rent unless, in point of fertility or situation, it belongs to those superior kinds which exist in less quantity than the demand—which can not be made to yield all the produce required for the community, unless on terms still less advantageous than the resort to less favored soils. (1.) The worst land which can be cultivated as a means of subsistence is that which will just replace the seed and the food of the laborers employed on it, together with what Dr. Chalmers calls their secondaries; that is, the laborers required for supplying them with tools, and with the remaining necessaries of life. Whether any given land is capable of doing more than this is not a question of political economy, but of physical fact. The supposition leaves nothing for profits, nor anything for the laborers except necessaries: the land, therefore, can only be cultivated by the laborers themselves, or else at a pecuniary loss; and, _a fortiori_, can not in any contingency afford a rent. (2.) The worst land which can be cultivated as an investment for capital is that which, after replacing the seed, not only feeds the agricultural laborers and their secondaries, but affords them the current rate of wages, which may extend to much more than mere necessaries, and leaves, for those who have advanced the wages of these two classes of laborers, a surplus equal to the profit they could have expected from any other employment of their capital. (3.) Whether any given land can do more than this is not merely a physical question, but depends partly on the market value of agricultural produce. What the land can do for the laborers and for the capitalist, beyond feeding all whom it directly or indirectly employs, of course depends upon what the remainder of the produce can be sold for. The higher the market value of produce, the lower are the soils to which cultivation can descend, consistently