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ON THE RURAL ECONOMY

The next head of expenee is rent. Some confusion of ideashas prevailed on this point, as if the amount of rent was nota necessary and unavoidable charge upon cultivation, butwas, in part at least, a voluntary expence on the part of thecultivator. Such an idea is equally inconsistent with correctgeneral views, and with the details of practice. The cultiva-tor must pay to the proprietor of land, as well as to the la-bourer, and indeed to all whom he employs, the market va-lue of their respective commodities at the time,—or he mustwithdraw from his profession. The circumstances upon whichthis value depends form no part of the present inquiry.

Taxes, ^direct and indirect, constitute a very considerablecharge against cultivation; and some of them, such as thetax on property and on farm-horses, are considered directlyhostile to production. The former description of taxes, how-ever, must, in ordinary cases, fall upon the proprietor, andit is therefore only necessary to include their amount in esti-mating the rent; and the latter would require to be tracedthrough so many channels, that it would be almost impossi-ble, in a work of this nature, to exhibit any satisfactory state-ment of their amount; or to calculate the proportion, in whichthe charges of cultivation, and the prices of produce, are en-hanced by the complicated operation of taxes.

The prices of land-produce, besides defraying all thesecharges, must leave a balance to the cultivator equal to thecommon profits of trade ; that is, it must be sufficient to payhim the usual interest of money, to cover losses, and to re-munerate him for his time and talents. Though it may seema solecism to place the profits of trade among the expencesof cultivation, it is nevertheless sufficiently obvious, that theseprofits must be realized, as certainly as the expences must bereplaced.

As horse-labour forms a large portion of the charges ofcultivation under the second head, it may be thought the mostsimple and natural course would be, first to ascertain the cost