I shall not stop here to remark the harmony exhibited by the results of this law. What I desire you to observe at present is, that landed property no more escapes from the operation of this law than any other kind of property.
Brother Jonathan experiences this. He holds this language to the purchaser—“What I have expended on this property in permanent improvements represents a thousand days’ labour. I expect that you will, in the first place, reimburse me for these thousand days’ work, and then add something for the value which is inherent in the soil and independent of all human exertion.”
The purchaser replies:
“In the first place, I shall give you nothing for the value inherent in the soil, which is simply utility, which the adjoining property possesses as well as yours. Such native superhuman utility I can obtain gratis, which proves that it possesses no value.
“In the second place, since your books show that you have expended a thousand days’ work in bringing your land to its present state, I shall give you only 800 days’ labour; and my reason for it is, that with 800 days’ labour I can now-a-days accomplish the same improvements on the adjoining land as you have executed with 1000 days’ labour on yours. Pray consider that in the course of fifteen years the art of draining, clearing, building, sinking wells, designing farm-offices, transporting materials, has made great progress. Less labour is now required to effect each given result, and I cannot consent to give you ten for what I can get for eight, more especially as the price of grain has fallen in proportion to this progress, which is a profit neither to you nor to me, but to mankind at large.”
Thus Jonathan was left no alternative but to sell his land at a loss, or to keep it.
Undoubtedly the value of land is not affected by one circumstance exclusively. Other circumstances—such as the construction of a canal, or the erection of a town—may act in an opposite direction, and raise its value, but the improvements of which I have spoken, which are general and inevitable, always necessarily tend to depress it.
The conclusion to be deduced from all I have said is, that as long as there exists in a country abundance of land to be cleared and brought under cultivation, the proprietor, whether he cultivates, or lets, or sells it, enjoys no privilege, no monopoly, no exceptional [p266] advantage,—above all, that he levies no tax upon the gratuitous liberality of nature. How could it be so, if we suppose men to be free? Have not people who are possessed of capital and energy a perfect right to make a choice between agriculture, manufactures, commerce, fisheries, navigation, the arts, or the learned professions? Will not capital and industry always tend to those departments which give extraordinary returns? Will they not desert those which entail loss? Is this inevitable shifting and redistribution of human efforts not sufficient to establish, according to our hypothesis, an equilibrium of profit and remuneration? Do agriculturists in the United States make fortunes more rapidly than merchants, shipowners, bankers, or physicians,—as would necessarily happen if they received the wages of their labour like other people, and the recompense of nature’s work into the bargain?
Would you like to know how a proprietor even in the United States could establish for himself a monopoly? I shall try to explain it.
Suppose Jonathan to assemble all the proprietors of the United States, and hold this language to them: