been no rise in agricultural products is due to the enormous extent of marvelously fertile grain-lands in the West, and to the cheapness of transportation from those districts to the seaboard. For a general understanding of the law of rent the following table will show how, under constant increase of population (represented by four different advances of population, in the first column), first the best and then the poorer lands are brought into cultivation. We will suppose (1) that the most fertile land, A, at first pays no rent; then (2), when more food is wanted than land A can supply, it will be profitable to till land B, but which, as yet, pays no rent. But if eighteen bushels are a sufficient return to a given amount of labor and capital, then when an equal amount of labor and capital engaged on A returns twenty-four bushels, six of that are beyond the ordinary profit, and form the rent on land A, and so on; C will next be the line of comparison, and then D; as the poorer soils are cultivated, the rent of A increases: Population A B C D Increase. 24 18 12 6 bushels bushels bushels bushels Total Rent in Total Rent in Total Rent in Total Rent in product Bushels product Bushels product Bushels product Bushels I. 24 0 .. .. .. .. .. .. II. 24 6 18 0 .. .. .. .. III. 24 12 18 6 12 0 .. .. IV. 24 18 18 12 12 6 6 0 § 5. Opposing Views of the Law of Rent. Under the name of rent, many payments are commonly included, which are not a remuneration for the original powers of the land itself, but for capital expended on it. The buildings are as distinct a thing from the farm as the stock or the timber on it; and what is paid for them can no more be called rent of land than a payment for cattle would be, if it were the custom that the landlord should stock the farm for the tenant. The buildings, like the cattle, are not land, but capital, regularly consumed and reproduced; and all payments made in consideration for them are properly interest.