I shall accept your kind invitation, and intend being with you on
Saturday evening at the usual time. We can then talk over the points on
which we differ. I will bring with me the papers on which I have been
busy since you left London, and in which my objections are more fully
stated than can be done in the compass of a letter[76].
In the case of the Scotch farmers who made such large profits on their
capital during the latter part of their leases[77], they appear to me to
have been enjoying rent, arising not from improvements in agriculture,
but from poorer land being taken into cultivation. If their leases had
expired sooner, rent would have been increased long before on those
farmers. It would be desirable to know what the rent on those farms was
when the lease was originally granted, or rather what proportion it bore
to the capital then employed and what the proportion of rent is to the
capital now employed.
The effects of monopoly cannot, I think, be felt till no more land can
be advantageously cultivated. You have yourself said, and I very much
admire the passage[78], that the last portion of capital employed on the
land yields only the common profits of stock, and does not afford any
rent. If so, corn, like everything else, is regulated in its price by
the cost of production, and every other portion of capital employed on
the land is reduced to the same level of profits only because no more
capital can be employed with more advantage, and all which it anywhere
yields more is rent and not profit.
I have read the Appendix[79] also with great attention, and cannot help
thinking that you have quite thrown off the character of impartiality to
which, in the Observations, I thought you fairly entitled. You are
avowedly for restrictions on importation; of that I do not complain. It
is not easy to estimate justly the dangers to which we may be exposed.
Those who are for an open trade in corn may underrate them, and it is
possible that you may overrate them. It is a most difficult point to
calculate these dangers at their fair value; but in an economical view,
although you have here and there allowed that we might be benefited by
importing cheap rather than by growing dear, you point out many
inconveniences which we should suffer from the loss of agricultural
capital and from other causes, which would make it appear as if even
economically you thought we ought to import corn,--such is the
approbation with which you quote from Adam Smith of [_sic_] the benefits
of agriculture over commerce in increasing production[80], and which I
cannot help thinking is at variance with all your general doctrines.
Your observations on the advantages (and therefore on the injustice to
other classes) which the stockholder would reap from a low price of corn
are, I think, very correct; but I do not think these objections should
stand in the way of the general good. They, the stockholders, have at
different periods suffered much, and, if the sinking fund be now
appropriated to other services[81], another striking injustice will be
added to the long list. I meant to write only a few lines and have
filled a long letter....
Yours very truly,
DAVID RICARDO.