THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

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of the lease, the landlord endeavours to leave him no greatershare of the produce than what is sufficient to keep up thestock from which he furnishes the seed, pays the labour, andpurchases and maintains the cattle, and other instruments ofhusbandry, together with the ordinary profits of farming stockin the neighbourhood. This is evidently the smallest sharewith which the tenant can content himself, without being aloser, and the landlord seldom means to leave him any more.Whatever part of the produce, or, what is the same thing,whatever part of its price, is over and above this share, henaturally endeavours to reserve to himself as the rent of hisland, which is evidently the highest the tenant can afford topay in the actual circumstances of the land. Sometimes,indeed, the liberality, more frequently the ignorance, of thelandlord, makes him accept of somewhat less than this por-tion; and sometimes too, though more rarely, the ignoranceof the tenant makes him undertake to pay somewhat more,or to content himself with somewhat less, than the ordinaryprofits of farming stock in the neighbourhood. This portion,however, may still be considered as the natural rent of land,or the rent for which it is naturally meant that land shouldfor the most part be let.

The rent of land, it may be thought, is frequently no morethan a reasonable profit or interest for the stock laid out bythe landlord upon its improvement. This, no doubt, maybe partly the case upon some occasions; for it can scarceever be more than partly the case. The landlord demandsa rent even for unimproved land, and the supposed interestor profit upon the expense of improvement is generally anaddition to this original rent. Those improvements, besides,are not always made by the stock of the landlord, but some-times by that of the tenant. When the lease comes to berenewed, however, the landlord commonly demands the sameaugmentation of rent, as if they had been all made by hisown.

He sometimes demands rent for what is altogether incapa-ble of human improvement. Kelp is a species of sca-weed,which, when burnt, yields an alkaline salt, useful for makingglass, soap, and for several other purposes. It grows inseveral parts of Great Britain, particularly in Scotland , uponsuch rocks only as lie within the high water mark, which aretwice every day covered with the sea, and of which the pro-duce, therefore, was never augmented by human interest.