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THE NATURE AND CAUSES OE

There are some of which the produce is barely sufficientto pay the labour, and replace, together with its ordinaryprofits, the stock employed in working them. They affordsome profit to the undertaker of the work, but no rent to thelandlord. They can be wrought advantageously by nobodybut the landlord, who, being himself the undertaker of thework, gets the ordinary profit of the capital which he em-ploys in it. Many coal-mines in Scotland are wrought inthis manner, and can be wrought in no other. The landlordwill allow nobody else to work them without paying somerent, and nobody can afford to pay any.

Other coal-mines in the same country, sufficiently fertile,cannot be wrought on account of their situation. A quan-tity of mineral, sufficient to defray the expense of working,could be brought from the mine by the ordinary, or even lessthan the ordinary quantity of labour; but in an inlandcountry, thinly inhabited, and without either good roads orwater-carriage, this quantity could not be sold.

Coals are a less agreeable fuel than wood : they are saidtoo to be less wholesome. The expense of coals, therefore, atthe place where they are consumed, must generally be some-what less than that of wood.

The price of wood again varies with the state of agricul-ture, nearly in the same manner, and exactly for the samereason, as the price of cattle. In its rude beginnings thegreater part of every country is covered with wood, which isthen a mere incumbrance of no value to the landlord, whowould gladly give it to any body for the cutting. As agri-culture advances, the woods are partly cleared by the progressof tillage, and partly go to decay in consequence of the in-creased number of cattle. These, though they do not increasein the same proportion as corn, which is altogether the ac-quisition of human industry, yet multiply under the care andprotection of men ; who store up in the season of plenty whatmay maintain them in that scarcity, who through the wholeyear furnish them with a greater quantity of food than un-cultivated nature provides for them, and who, by destroyingand extirpating their enemies, secure them in the free enjoy-ment of all that she provides. Numerous herds of cattle,w hcn allowed to wander through the woods, though theydo not destroy the old trees, hinder any young ones fromcoming up, so that in the course of a century or two thewhole forest goes to ruin. The scarcity of wood then raises