“Rent is the produce that remains to a man——”
“Ella is to pay rent,” interrupted Ronald, laughing.
“Well, well. Rent is the part of the produce paid to the landlord when his tenant has made as much as his neighbours on worse land will let him gain.”
“True, as far as your account goes; but not clear or full enough. You do not know yet, boys, how important it is for you to understand all this rightly before you pay rent yourselves, and even if you were never to pay.—Come, Ronald.”
“Rent,” said Ronald, “is that portion of produce which is paid to the landlord for the use of whatever makes corn and fish grow in the land or water which the tenant uses.”
“Or, as we say, ‘the use of the powers of production.’ Very well; this is what we mean by rent. Now, what does rent consist of?”
“Of whatever the richest has left over what the poorest makes of the same quantity of land and of money laid out upon it.”
“Just so; and therefore if your kelp-ledge yields more than mine next season, with equal pains, whatever difference there is will go to the laird as rent. If I get the intelligence I talked of from the market, you may make more while paying a rent, than you would ever have done rent-free, without knowing what your prices ought to be.”
“Had Forbes and his neighbours such intelligence before they sold their corn?”
“O yes; even before the road was made, newspapers found their way across the country; and afterwards we had intercourse with the towns at least once a week.”