used to advance the personal friends of the officer, yet that it may be used to strengthen his party and his faction. Upon that theory it is now generally exercised. (See SPOILS SYSTEM, PATRONAGE, PROMOTION.)- The abuses in connection with the power of removal are by no means all on the side of its selfish or partisan exercise. The same malign influences which cause worthy officials to be sent away, are as powerfully exerted to keep the unworthy in their places. Those who have been able to make the public service a hospital for their dependents, combine to resent all attempts to remove them. It may cost a postmaster or a head of a department his place to send away the incompetent electioneering agent of a great party chieftain, or even the young lady" recommended "by a congressman." Offices are frequently burdened with supernumeraries, whom those having the power have not the courage to remove. President Grant, in one of his messages, referred to the fact that it was far casier to remove the unworthy who came in through competition, and were therefore without influence to keep them, than it was to remove the inefficient favorites of great politicians. - Under despotic forms of government— t—or where corruption, as in "Turkey, is habitually resorted to as an agency of administration-there is of course no more pretense of justice, or regard for moral obligation, in exercising the power of removal, than of that of appointment. It is, without scruple, used to reward favorites, to gain money, to suppress independence, to strengthen dynasties and hierarchies. Cromwell used it, almost as freely as did James and Charles, to uphold political and religious partisans. Even as late as George III. it was used for nearly or quite all those purposes, and in the army and navy as well as in the civil service. When liberty and justice were enough advanced to enable party majorities to rule, the dominant party began by prostituting that power for selfish ends in much the same spirit that the corrupt tyrants of earlier days had done. - Soon after the formation of the American constitution, there arose a public opinion in Great Britain too strong for the king to confront, which condemned removals without cause, and such removals ceased. Parties, there, have long since reached the sound conclusion that even their own strength is not increased by mere partisan appointments or proscriptive removals. (See CIVIL SERVICE REFORM, PROMOTIONS.)-From the beginning of our national administration until Jackson came to the presidency, it was the accepted theory and the constant practice that removals were not to be made without good cause; and that, unless in the cases of the legal advisers of the president and perhaps a few others, political opinion did not constitute such a cause. Under Jefferson and the second Adams especially, there was great pressure for removals for political reasons. But they, and each of the first six presidents, standing upon principle and a sense of public duty, nobly resisted that partisan demand; altogether making only seventy-three removals in the forty years covered by their terms. Of these, Washington made nine, and all for cause; John Adams, nine, and none on mere political grounds; Jefferson, thirty-nine, of which he said none were for party reasons; Madison, five; Monroe, nine; and John Q. Adams only two, and both for cause. It is certain that not one of these presidents made a proscription or partisan removal according to the later practice. With Jackson's accession to the presidency a new spirit triumphed. Offices were treated rather as party spoils than as public trusts. Removals were made for the treble purpose of punishing political opponents, of rewarding subservient supporters, and "of strengthening the party." In the year from March 4, 1829, to March 4, 1830, President Jackson appears to have made 734 removals. Throughout his two terms his use of the appointing power was in the same intolerant and despotic spirit. In all the lower grades of the public service, the president's example was soon followed. The theory that patronage is essential to the vitality and usefulness of parties, and that "to the victor belong the spoils," was generally enforced. The higher sentiment of the nation was outraged, and all official life was humiliated and debased. We have no space for enlarging upon the disastrous effects of the spoils system then first established in the national administration. (Sec SPOILS SYSTEM, PATRONAGE.) — How thoroughly the theory enforced at Washington was also enforced in the local offices is well illustrated a few years later at the New York custom house. One collector, there, in the four years from 1858 to 1862, removed 389 of his 690 subordinates; another, of the opposite party, in the three and a half years next following, removed 525 out of 702 of those serving under him. Nearly all these removals were for partisan reaThe duty of removing for cause was, by reason of vicious political influence, but rarely performed. And this reckless, demoralizing proscription, fatal alike to efficiency in the customs service, to purity in politics, and to all manly selfrespect in the public service, continued there, and generally prevailed in the whole civil administration, until the demand for a reform policy began to be effective soon after 1871. In the five years, or 1,565 secular days, preceding the year 1871, there were 1,678 removals, and nearly all for mere partisan reasons, in the New York custom house -or, more than at the rate of one every secular day of the five years! - From the introduction of the reform methods, in July, 1878, (under which competitive examinations for admission to the New York custom house have been since enforced), until the 8th of September of that year, no removal was there made. From the last-named date to Feb. 20, 1881, (nearly two and a half years), only forty-four removals were made in the office, and all for cause, and hence none for political reasons. From the last-named date to this time (November, 1882), the removals have been upon the same basis and in almost the same ratio, as in sons. many members who sought to put an inexperienced partisan of their own faction into his place. The speaker of the present house of representatives, merely for political reasons, has arbitrarily removed one or more of its most efficient stenographic reporters, in violation of the spirit if not the letter of its own rules and usages, which allow removals only for cause, and has appointed a successor, unequal in capacity, by reason of which the business of the house appears to have been embarrassed. (See speech of Mr. And while we are writing, the facts are laid before the public of a removal of a female postmaster, very recently made in Virginia, only for the reason that a senator treats the sympathy of her brother with the political faction which opposes him as a sufficient cause for demanding such removal! In state and municipal administration, removals are constantly being made for no better cause; by reason of which, men of high self-respect and capacity scorn the public service; those in it are humiliated; administration is made inefficient and needlessly expensive; and the intensity, intrigue and corruption of party politics, and the strife for places, are greatly increased. It is not possible to exaggerate the discouraging, humiliating effects upon the great body of the civil servants, produced by the constant sense that no merits of their own, but an influence and interests foreign to their sphere of duties, are most potential for keeping them in their places; or to overstate the demoralizing influence upon all official and political life of so vast a power as that of appointment and removal habitually used in defiance of the highest obligations of morality, patriotism, and the official oath. the two and a half years preceding 1881. - The effects of the new system upon removals, as enforced in the New York postoffice during the same periods, have been almost identical with those at the custom house. And at the several other offices where competitive examinations, with various defects and limitations, have been enforced, there has been a corresponding reduction in the number of proscriptive removals. Like results attended the enforcement of such examination at Washington under President Grant.-Proscriptive and partisan removals (or, in other words, | Springer, “Congressional Record," July 27, 1882.) removals without cause), are almost invariably made in order to furnish a vacancy for some influential or strongly backed office seeker. And if it were necessary that every such office seeker should win the first place in a competitive examination before he could be appointed, there would be few unjust removals, and the question as to a reasonably permanent tenure of office would present little difficulty, if it was not practically settled. The class of men who are being pushed, or who beg and intrigue for office, are rarely those who can win a place in an honest rivalry or competition of merit. The reasons why members of congress refused to vote money to enable President Grant to continue competitive examinations at Washington, and why congress has given no aid in support of the competitive or merit system at the New York offices, are largely to be found in the simple facts that the new system was fatal to all arbitrary and proscriptive removals, and hence destructive of the vast congressional patronage, by the aid of which so many members secure their own elections, augment their influence and importance, and get places for their henchmen and favorites. Members of congress, whose duty it is to make laws in aid of keeping the most useful public servants in their places, have exerted a very great part of that pernicious influence which has so generally made our public servants the dependents and servile agents of scheming officials and unscrupulous chieftains. — During the last few years there has been a rapid development of a sentiment which condemns all removals without cause. The people are beginning to take notice of the abuse which is becoming more and more an issue in the elections. If the more sagacious party leaders already see the need of arresting this form of proscription and despotism, it is yet true that very lately, and even within a few months, the most arbitrary and indefensible removals have been made. Upon each of the late changes in the party majorities in the houses of congress, mere ministerial subordinates have been changed in order to gain partisan patronage. The time of the national senate, during the past and present year, has been largely given to mere factional contentions, growing out of the attempted removals of postmasters and collectors whose political opinions all true statesmen must hold to be unimportant, if not utterly immaterial. At the last session the house was forced to a vote in order to retain a skilled and invaluable clerk against a pressure of DORMAN B. EATON. RENT. This is the term recognized in political economy, to denote the net product of the land, i. e., that portion of the total product, which, after deducting what covers the expense of production, remains, and constitutes a surplus. This surplus naturally reverts to the owners of the soil; they gather it themselves when they work their own lands; they receive it from the hands of farmers or metayers when they leave to others the care of making them productive; in all cases, the rent forms part of the property. We must not, however, confound it with the price paid by one who hires a farm, (called sometimes farm rent), although it is one of the elements of the latter. Every case of farm rent, every leasing price, whether payable in money or in kind, includes something additional, viz., the remuneration due the land owners for expenditures made by them at various times in the past, to facilitate labor or increase its results. The buildings for farm service or for residence, the fences, ditches and plantations which the farm embraces, have often cost considerable sums, and it is just that those who enjoy the advantages connected with their existence, should pay all or a part of the in terest on the capital that had to be devoted to them. On the other hand, the conditions of the lease of lands have been discussed by the contracting parties, and may have been so determined as to favor either. Nevertheless, wherever the price for the use of the farm is payable in money, there is a constant tendency for it to include the entire rent. Rent is a net product; it is only realized when active industry has been fully remu. nerated, and it is not less difficult for farmers to reserve any of it for themselves, than for proprietors to induce farmers to sacrifice to them a part of the profits due to their improvements. But, whatever may be the nature of the circumstances which determine the apportionment of the rent of land between the owner and farmer, they can neither permanently effect its real amount nor alter its original character. Among the great facts to which the attention of economists has been drawn, few have given rise to so many controversies as the rent of lands. What it is, its origin, its proportions, its effects, its legitimacy even, everything connected with its existence, has been the object of long and patient investigations, and still harmony has not yet been established between the differing opinions. This is the more to be regretted, because, in this very question of rent are involved many other problems of deep social import, and the effects of its solution naturally extend far beyond the limits which scien tific investigation has attained. — We will here commence by pointing out the order in which the opinions on the matter of rent originated; we will note their characteristic differences; then we will take up the question in its whole extent, and, in our course, we shall find occasion to show how far each of the theories before us seems to depart from or to approach the truth, so far as the best established facts permit us to discern it. — It was the physiocratic school who first enunciated an opinion on the nature of rent. They characterized it as the net product of the land, and in this they were not in error; but soon, attributing to it an extreme and exclusive importance, they made it the only source of public and private wealth. We know how erroneous a doctrine must be, which is based on the idea that no other labor than that on land can obtain more than the equivalent of the values it consumes, a doctrine denying productive power to employments without which most things produced from the land would themselves remain unsuited to use, and not admitting that men could realize any other riches than that which the natural fertility of the soil put at their disposal. However, in spite of this fundamental error which vitiated all their conclusions, we can not deny the physiocrates the merit of having apprehended well the character of rent and having given a pretty accurate definition of it. Among their observations on the natural increase of rent, there are also some which are both just and important. The net product, rent, is the excess which is left from the crops after the expenses of cultivation are reimbursed; it is the portion of the fruits of the earth from which the non-agricultural classes subsist; and, doubtless, in the normal and regular order of things, the greater or less amount of this excess has a strong influence on the degree of power and prosperity in reserve for nations. - With and by the illustrious Adam Smith, began what may rightfully be called true economic science. The opinion of Smith on the subject of rent is much like that of the physiocrates. It is substantially as follows: In labor on land, nature acts conjointly with man, and rent is the product of its co-operative power. It is this co-operative power of the earth, the enjoy. ment of which landholders grant in consideration of a price for the lease based upon a proportional share of the sum at which it figures in the results of production. The opinion of Adam Smith has obtained the assent of most economists. J. B. Say, Storch, Rossi and Rau adopted it, or varied little from it. Dr. Anderson, however, had previously presented a harmonious series of ideas on the subject, which were at the same time more complex and better developed.* But his system did not attract attention until after having been reproduced again in the writings of Malthus and Ricardo, and it is under the name of the latter that he has taken a place in economic science. · The starting point of Ricardo is in reality the same as that of Adam Smith. What the latter calls the co-operative power of land, Ricardo calls natural fertility, or original powers; but what he has added to the fundamental notion is, an exposition of the rules which, in his opinion, govern the formation and progressive increase of rent. According to Ricardo, rent is not solely the result of a natural fertility which permits the land to return, to those who cultivate it, harvests superior to their needs; it arises from the unequal distribution of this fertility. So long as the population, having plenty of room, can work only the best lands at their disposal, there is no rent: but just as soon as, on account of their increase in numbers, the same population are compelled, in order to procure means of subsistence, to attack lands of inferior quality, rent arises and becomes the share of the proprietors of the portions of the soil that were first cultivated. And the following is his explanation. Being less fertile than the others, the lands on which the labor is expended can not return, for a like expenditure in cultivation, as great a product. The crops they yield require additional expense and labor, and as it has become impossible for society to do without its complement of supplies, it is compelled to pay for provisions whatever price is necessary to insure production on land that has just been cleared. In this inevitable movement, it is the net cost of the produce on the worst land to which recourse must be had, which fixes the general price, and consequently determines the *A main point in Anderson's theory was, that increased demand for food leads to increase of price, and this permits additional cost to be bestowed in bringing inferior land into cultivation. (See Macleod's Econ. Phil., vol. ii., p. 29.)- E. J. L. profits of the proprietors of the land first culti- tion of human industry. Such is also the point vated, the realization of which secures them a of view from which rent was regarded by a man rent. They sell at a higher price what they ob- whose premature loss science can not too deeply tain without increased cost or advances, and find deplore. M. Bastiat, dreading the consequences themselves masters of a greater surplus than they of any doctrine which seemed to authorize the had before prices had risen. A like effect is again admission that wealth could exist which was not produced whenever the necessity of increasing exclusively the product of services or of human the arable domain is felt. Worse lands are con- efforts, started with the same idea as Mr. Carey. tinually being brought under cultivation; the According to him, rent is and can be only the price of produce rises because of the increased interest on the capital invested in clearing the outlay they require; and, at each advance in soil and preparing it for production. Only M. prices which takes place, rent is seen to arise Bastiat recognizes that rent may occur without where it did not previously exist, and to increase the proprietor having to make any sacrifice to where it had already arisen. Such are the ideas reap the benefit of an unexpected increase: and on which the theory is based which is called by this case he explains by remarking that there is Ricardo's name. This theory affirms, or at least | nothing peculiar in landed property; that what appears to affirm, that rent has no other source creates the value of the services rendered by than the difference in the degree of fertility be- every employment of human industry, whatever tween different portions of the soil: it attributes agent it may use, is not alone the efforts made by its origin and development to no other principle. the producer, but also the efforts spared to the than the continual rise in the market price of consumer; and that the latter, whenever his wants food, and it makes the difference between a gen- increase, pays more for the service rendered him eral price current, regulated by the expenses con- in saving him the more costly efforts he would nected with production in localities where these have to make to provide for himself without such expenses are greatest, and the particular net cost aid. It is much to be regretted that M. Bastiat in the other portions of the soil, the measure of did not have time to make a precise and wellthe rent that each of the latter affords or is arranged statement of his ideas before his death. adapted to afford. - Ricardo's theory was of It was in connection with the treatment of real course widely taken into consideration by the estate that he announced them, in the clever economic world. It gave, or seemed to give, the book he published under the title of " Economic explanation of a certain number of facts, which, Harmonies." The special chapter that he proat the time when it originated, were receiving posed to devote to rent was scarcely outlined, much attention from the public. Moreover, many and what has been preserved of it consists only writers accepted it fully; and it was not until our of incomplete fragments, in which the author's day that it found decided opponents. Attacked ideas are not clearly discernible. Such are the first in England by Prof. Jones, of Hailebury, it principal opinions to which the existence of rent was afterward assailed by adversaries whose deni- has given rise. Their antagonism is very marked. als extended even to the principle to which Smith While some attribute the formation of rent to had given his adhesion. A very distinguished the co-operative action of nature in agricultural American economist, Mr. Carey, has denied that labor, others, denying all influence to this action, the natural fertility of the soil is among the consider rent only as the remuneration for the causes productive of rent. In his view, rent has expenses and efforts by which mankind have no other source than the expenses successively succeeded in transforming the earth into an instruincurred in the interest of production. And ment of production. We will review the whole among these expenses he includes, besides those subject, and attempt to ascertain the truth amid of which the lands under cultivation have been the obscurities and complications which have the direct object, the construction of roads, canals, hitherto hindered its successful investigation. and any means of communication designed to Origin of Rent. There are, in the first place, two facilitate transportation and to render the markets things which it seems to us impossible to contest. accessible to products which, if they could not One is, that the earth is endowed with fertility; have reached them, would not have been de- the other, that it is not equally so in all parts. It manded of the soil. Mr. Carey, moreover, has is a fact no less evident, that this fertility does endeavored to demonstrate that Ricardo was en- not even need the co-operation of man in order tirely wrong in regard to the order in which to manifest itself. In the most uncultivated concultivation has taken place, and that it has not dition the land never fails to be covered with begun with the most fertile lands, but with those vegetable growths, some of which can supply most easily cleared, or the nearest to centres of food and support animals whose flesh may be consumption. Taking Mr. Carey's opinions in caten; and it is the land which, by insuring to their plain signification, they consist in denying to the human race at the beginning harvests already · the land itself any participation in the formation produced, has permitted it to escape the destrucof rent; in attempting to prove that all this rent tive effects of famine. Of course, men had to represents only the remuneration for advances be at the trouble of gathering the fruit, pulling made to render the soil amenable to culture; in a up the roots, and catching the game and the fish word, that rent is and can be only a simple crea- on which they subsisted; but if such efforts had Wher alone the power of conferring value on the prod- | ods, lands which had yielded to those who sought ucts which the earth of itself put within their reach, it is none the less true that where these products were more abundant or more easily obtainable, less effort was needed to appropriate them, to adapt them to use; in a word, to convert them into exchangeable wealth. Well, it is to this natural fertility of the earth, which has from the beginning put its inhabitants in the way of obtaining means of subsistence which were not wholly the fruit of their labor even, that rent owes its origin. Rent is the surplus realized over the expense of production, and wherever it was possible to those who, in any way whatever, labored to gather the fruits of the earth, to amass more of them than their personal necessities required, there was a surplus to their advantage, which was rent, and rent very evidently due to the fertility of the portion of the soil on which their industry had been employed. The most savage tribes have nothing to learn in this regard. They contest with each other the occupation of places where the waters most abound in fish, or where the land furnishes the most game or fruit; and this is because they well know that as long as they keep exclusive possession of it, they will derive from a given amount of effort, time and fatigue, a quantity of the means of subsistence superior to what they would obtain on less favored portions of the soil; in a word, an actual excess over the expenses of production, which would be everywhere else less amply repaid. We will say more. From the first, the earth must, in certain places, have conferred a rent on those who as yet knew only how to gather its spontaneous productions, as otherwise civilization could not have arisen and commenced to advance. While most of the savage tribes were exhausting themselves in efforts to find enough to prevent them from dying of starvation, others, more favored, obtained, without any more skill or effort, resources more than sufficient to supply their necessities; and the latter were not long in bettering their condition. Free to provide in advance for future consumption, it became possible for them to devote leisure to occupations other than the mere search for food. They could make weapons, the implements needed in fishing and hunting, and the means of deriving more profit from their labor; and in the end, they could amass the provisions or capital whose possession would enable them to undertake the breaking up and cultivating the land. We may safely assert, that, if Providence had not so disposed things that the earth offered in some places, to its earliest inhabitants, products which it did not take all their time and care to obtain, the savage manner of life would never have come to an end: men would to-day be still wandering naked and hungry, a prey to invincible poverty, distinguished in no respect from the animals called into existence at the same time with themselves. The invention of the art of agriculture did not alter the nature of the primordial fact. There had been, during previous peri their products, more than they needed for sub- |