TJIE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

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to pay the whole rent, wages, and profit necessary lor pre-paring and bringing it to market, according to, the rate atwhich they are commonly paid in corn land ; it must not beso much more as the present price of sugar. Our tobaccoplanters, accordingly, have shewn the same fear of the super-abundance of tobacco, which the proprietors of the old vine-yards in France have of the superabundance of wine. Byact of assembly they have restrained its cultivation to sixthousand plants, supposed to yield a thousand weight of to-bacco, for every negro between sixteen and sixty years of age.Such a negro, over and above this quantity of tobacco, canmanage, they reckon, four acres of Indian corn. To preventthe market from being overstocked too, they have sometimesin plentiful years, we are told by Dr. Douglas* (I suspect hehas been ill informed), burnt a certain quantity of tobacco forevery negro, in the same manner as the Dutch are said to doof spices. If such violent methods are necessary to keep upthe present price of tobacco, the superior advantage of itsculture over that of corn, if it still has any, will not probablybe of long coxrtinuance.

It is in this manner that the rent of the cultivated land, ofwhich the produce is human food, regulates the rent of thegreater part of other cultivated land. No particular producecan long afford less, because the land would immediately beturned to another use; and if any particular produce com-monly affords more, it is because the quantity of land whichcan be fitted for it is too small to supply the effectual demand.

In Europe corn is the principal produce of land whichserves immediately for human food. Except in particularsituations, therefore, the rent of corn land regulates in Europe that of all other cultivated land. Britain need envy neitherthe vineyards of France nor the olive plantations of Italy .Except in particular situations, the value ol these is regu-lated by that of corn, in which the fertility of Britain is notmuch inferior to that of either of those two countries.

If in any country the common and favourite vegetable foodof the people should be drawn from a plant of which the mostcommon land, with the same, or nearly the same, culture,produced a much greater quantity than the most fertile doesof corn, the rent of the landlord, or the surplus quantity of foodwhich would remain to him, after paying the labour and re-placing the stock of the farmer, together with its ordinary

* Douglas's Summary, vul. ii- 373, 373.