On the Philosophy of Discovery, Chapters Historical and Critical

by William Whewell

And what is the sounder and wiser mode of proceeding in order to obtain a science of such things? We must classify the facts which we observe, and take care that we do not ascribe to the facts in our immediate neighbourhood or specially under our notice, a generality of prevalence which does not belong to them. We must proceed by the ladder of Induction, and be sure we have obtained the narrower generalizations, before we aspire to the widest.

(Correction of them by Induction. Rent.)—5. For instance; in the case of the latter of the above two propositions—that Rent is the excess of the produce of good soils over the worst—that is the case in England and Scotland; but is it the case in other countries? Let us see. Why is it the case in England? Because if the rent demanded for good land were more than the excess of the produce over bad land, the farmer would prefer the bad land as more gainful. If the rent demanded for good land were less than the excess, the bad land would be abandoned by the farmer.

But all this goes upon the supposition that the farmer can remove from good land to bad, or from bad to good, or apply his capital in some other way than farming, according as it is more gainful. This is true in England; but is it true all over the world?

By no means. It is true in scarcely any other part of the world. In almost every other part of the world the cultivator is bound to the land, so that he cannot remove himself and his capital from it; and cannot, because he is not satisfied with his position upon it, seek and find a position and a subsistence elsewhere. On the contrary, he is bound by the laws and customs of the country, by constitution, history and character, so that he cannot, or can only with great difficulty, change his plan and mode of life. And thus over great part of the world the fundamental supposition on which rests the above generalization respecting Rent is altogether false.

An able political economist[293] has taken the step, which as we have said, sound philosophy would have prescribed: he has classified the states of society which exist or have existed on the earth, as they bear on this point, the amount of Rent. He has classified the modes in which the produce is, in different countries and different stages of society, divided between the cultivator and the proprietor: and he finds that the natural divisions are these:—Serf Rents, that is, labour rents paid by the Cultivator to the Landowner, as in Russia: Métayer Rents, where the produce is divided between the Cultivator and the Landowner, as in Central Europe: Ryot Rents, where a portion of the produce is paid to the Sovereign as Landlord, as in India: Cottier Rents, where a money-rent is paid by a Cultivator who raises his own subsistence from the soil; and Farmers' Rents, where a covenanted Rent is paid by a person employing labourers. In this last case alone is it true that the Rent is equal to the excess of good over bad soils.

The error of the conclusion, in this case, arises from assuming the mobility of capital and labour in cases in which it is not moveable: which is much as if mechanicians had reasoned respecting rigid bodies, supposing them to be fluid bodies.

But the error of method was in not classifying the facts of societies before jumping to a conclusion which was to be applicable to all societies.

(Wages.)—6. And in like manner there is an error of the same kind in the assertion of the other general principles:—that wages are determined by the capital which is forthcoming for the payment of wages; and that population is determined in its progress by wages. For there is a vast mass of population on the surface of the earth which does not live upon wages: and though in England the greater part of the people lives upon wages, in the rest of the world the part that does so is small. And in this case, as in the other, we must class these facts as they exist in different nations, before we can make assertions of any wide generality.

Mr. Jones[294] classed the condition of labourers in different countries in the same inductive manner in which he classed the tenure of land. He pointed out that there are three broad distinct classes of them: Unhired Labourers, who cultivate the ground which they occupy, and live on self-produced wages; Paid Dependants, who are paid out of the revenue or income of their employers, as the military retainers and domestic artizans of feudal times in Europe, and the greater part of the people of Asia at the present day; and Hired Labourers, who are paid wages from capital.

This last class, though taken as belonging to the normal condition of society by many political economists, is really the exceptional case, taking the world at large; and no propositions concerning the structure and relations of ranks in society can have any wide generality which are founded on a consideration of this case alone.