160 THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF

possible to store them like corn for two or three years toge-ther* The fear of not being able to sell them before theyrot, discourages their cultivation, and is,-perhaps, the chiefobstacle to their ever becoming in any great country, likebread, the principal vegetable food of all the different ranksof the people.

PART II.

Of the Produce of Land which sometimes docs, and sometimesdoes not, afford Rent .

Human food seems to be the only produce of land whichalways and necessarily affords some rent to the landlord.Other sorts of produce sometimes may and sometimes maynot, according: to different circumstances.

After food, clothing and lodging are the two great wantsof mankind.

Land in its original rude state can afford the materials ofclothing and lodging to a much greater number of peoplethan it can feed. In its improved state it can sometimes feeda greater number of people than it can supply with thosematerials; at least in the way in which they require jhem,and are willing to pay for them. In the one state, therefore,there is always a superabundance of those materials, whichare frequently, upon that account, of little or no value. Inthe other there is often a scarcity, which necessarily aug-ments their value. In the one state, a great part of them isthrown away as useless, and the price of what is used is con-sidered as equal only to the labour and expense of fitting itfor use, and can, therefore, afford no rent to the landlord.In the other they are all made use of, and there is frequentlya demand for more than can be had. Somebody is alwayswilling to give more for every part of them than what is suf-ficient to pay the expense of bringing them to market. Theprice, therefore, can always afford some rent to the landlord.

The skins of the larger animals were the original materialsof clothing. Among nations of hunters and shepherds, there-fore, whose food consists chiefly in the flesh of those animals,every man, by providing himself with food, provides him-self with the materials of more clothing than he can wear.If there was no foreign commerce, the greater part of themwould be thrown away as things of no value. This was pro-bably the case among the hunting nations of North America ,