were it not that the increased capital enables the owner to erect a saw-mill, by which to convert it into lumber for building houses. The road is extended, and timber No. 4 is brought forward, but the greater improvements made on the road to Nos. 1, 2, and 3, the rapid increase of capital in their vicinity, give new facilities for transporting their product to market. No. 5 and No. 6 come forward gradually, and in each case the further improvements in the vicinity of those first occupied, tend to preserve the value they had acquired, and even to increase it, although accompanied, as in the case of cultivated land, with a value, in labour, much below what has been expended for its benefit.

During this time, there are probably large bodies of land that are totally valueless. Some contain clay fit for making porcelain, and others granite, iron, or coal. They are totally neglected. The settlers are surrounded with the means of making axes of iron, but are obliged to content themselves with those of stone. The ore is in an inferior soil, that will yield no return to labour. Year after year, and perhaps century after century, passes away, during which time capital is invested in roads through them, yet they yield nothing to the owner in return for the taxes paid, or for the sums invested for their benefit. At length a canal is made, or a rail road is built, and this land begins to have value. Further application of capital increases it, and at length manufactories are built, and the iron and coal are brought into action, yielding a return corresponding, in some degree, to the great amount of capital that has been applied to their improvement.

These mines will not, however, be worked, unless they will yield as high wages as can be obtained by cultivation. When they are so, these "very inferior soils" yield wages far greater than were to be obtained when only those of the first degree of fertility were cultivated. At first, their value, even when worked, will be small, but the constant increase of capital applied to facilitate the transportation of their products to market, whether in the form of coal, or iron, or hardware, will tend to increase their value, until it may rise to hundreds of dollars, or pounds, per acre. If, however, an estimate were made of the amount of capital that had been, for centuries, applied to

their improvement, it would be found that their value was fa short of their actual cost.

The increase of manufactures would produce an increase o demand for houses, and masses of granite that for centuries hac been valueless, would be brought into activity. A rail road applied to facilitate the transport of stone to market would now give to this "inferior soil" a value vastly greater than that of the most fertile land. Clay for making bricks, or for the manufacture of porcelain, would also be rendered valuable, in consequence of the large amount of capital now applied, and an acre would perhaps purchase half a dozen acres of land of the highest degree of fertility.

This increase might take place in those near to a city, when capital was largely applied, while other bodies of coal or iron-of granite or clay-a few miles more distant, were almost, if not entirely, valueless. The more distant coal would be in precisely the situation of the lower strata of a coal field, the highest stratum of which was now in activity. Increased capital in the form of steam engines would give value in the one case, while rail roads would give it in the other.

It has been objected, that what is paid for the right of working coal mines cannot be considered in the light of rent, but rather as a compensation for the right of abstracting that only property which gives value to the soil. How far this view is correct, will be seen by a comparison of the course of operation in regard to land susceptible of cultivation, and that whose value arises from coal, or iron. The owner of the former applies a portion of its products in the form of manure, to keep the soil in condition to produce equal, if not superior, crops. If he fail to do this, the productive power is destroyed, and the land ceases to have value, or to yield rent. If the owner of a coal mine expend the whole proceeds, and allow his beds to be worked out, it in like manner ceases to produce rent; but if he follow the example of the farmer, in investing a portion of the produce in the continuation of his shaft, he finds new seams of coal, and a continued increase in the ability to yield rent, as has been the case with the coal mines of England. The shafts are constantly being sunk deeper, accompanied by constantly increasing value in the land, which is vastly greater now, when

they are obliged to go to the depth of 100 or 150 fathoms, than they were half a century since, when such expenditure was unnecessary. Many bodies of land then abandoned as valueless, are now worked with great advantage, and that such will be the case in future, there is no room to doubt. Improved means of working will enable the proprietors to raise their coal from depths far greater than those of the present shafts, and to draw revenues therefrom, perhaps as far exceeding those of the present time, as the latter exceed those of the last century.

Here we find precisely the same state of things that occurs in regard to land employed in agriculture. The lower strata of coal are in the situation of the dormant powers of land subjected to cultivation. When coal mines are worked with indifferent machinery, capable of extracting the coal from only a moderate depth, the land is soon worked out, and abandoned. Increased capital enables the miner to descend double the distance, and the value is now greater than at first. A further application of capital enables him to descend successively 300, 500, 600, 1000, or 1500 feet, and with every successive application the property acquires a higher value, notwithstanding the quantity of coal that has been taken out. In like manner the value of land rises as capital is applied. When the cultivator is provided with a stick only to aid him, he can with difficulty produce sufficient to keep him from starving-a spade enables him to make better wages-a plough increases them still more, and he now obtains 20 bushels to the acre with less labour than had before been necessary to produce ten. The successive additions of the horse-rake, the scythe, &c., &c., and the facility of transporting manure, increase the product, and he produces thirty bushels per acre. Thus we see that the circumstances attendant upon land worked for coal, iron, or copper, do not vary in any respect from that worked for wheat, rye, or oats.

A water power, beyond the limits of settlement, has powers as great as they can ever become, but they are not wanted, and have no exchangeable value. A few years afterwards we find that population has extended itself to or beyond it; that capital has been brought with population; and that roads have been made. The water power has become valuable, not because

its power is so, but because capital has been applied, in various forms, towards the making of roads. A further increase of capital brings a large increase of population, and it becomes the centre of a flourishing manufacturing district, as that of Lowell has become. The natural agent has nothing that it did not possess forty, or four hundred, years before, but capital has rendered its powers productive.

In building the first store, or place of exchange, the owner would experience all the difficulties attendant upon the want of machinery for the transportation of materials-for the burning of bricks, or sawing of lumber-and from the necessity of using an axe instead of a plane, or of a saw. When the trade of the settlement had increased so far as to render it expedient to have a second, the lots immediately adjoining would have acquired, from the expenditure of the owner of the first, a value fully equal, except the mere value of the building. These lots are therefore produced to their owners at much less cost than the first had been, and if the increased means of the settlement had diminished the quantity of labour required for producing a building similar to the first, there would be a further saving. The second building being erected, the exchangeable value of the first, in labour, would be only as much as No. 2 had cost, being much less than the owner had expended upon it. The third would be built with less labour than the second, and the fourth with still less, and the man who wished to rent the last, would give a much smaller proportion of the products of his business, as rent, than the first would have been willing to do. He would require to keep as much as would give him the ordinary rate of wages in the settlement for similar applications of time and talent, and as only half as much labour would now be required to produce a house, the owner could not demand so large a proportion of the proceeds of the labour applied to the sale of merchandise. The laws by which houses and lots are governed, are thus precisely similar to those which govern lands, mines, &c.

The value of property in and near towns and cities is liable to be greatly affected by the investment of capital elsewhere, by which trade is attracted in another direction, and by which they lose their advantages of situation. After the first store has

been built, if another trader, more active and better supplied with capital to conduct his business, were to establish himself at a few miles distant, he might gradually attract trade to his place, and the proprietor of farm No. 1, the immediate neighbour of the first, might find that the activity of the storekeeper on No. 6 had caused that land to assume the place of No. 1, and had placed himself in the situation of greatest distance from the best market. Such cases have occurred repeatedly, and will continue to occur. Lands in the vicinity of Tyre, of Rome, of Venice, and of Antwerp, possessed those advantages of situation that are now enjoyed by those in the neighbourhood of London and Liverpool, New York and Philadelphia; arising from abundant capital, by which they were rendered valuable.

The great city of Granada, and the capital employed by its merchants, enlivened the whole of that kingdom, and aided in giving value to all the land. Granada is now deserted; its commerce is fled, and with it the value of the land.

6

Lieutenant Burnes thus describes the change of a single century in India. Such has been the gradual decay of this mighty 'city, [Tàtta] so populous in the early part of the last century, in the days of Nadir Shah. The country in its vicinity lies 'neglected, and but a small portion of it is brought under 'tillage. He says immense tracts of the richest soil lie ' in a state of nature.' If the reader will turn to the same traveller's description of the great city of Balkh, he will find another strong instance. He will there see the remains of the great improvements that gave value to land that now lies totally unimproved and valueless. A moment's reflection will furnish an infinite number of cases of a similar kind, as Bagdad, Palmyra, Alexandria, &c. Labour and capital give value to land near Lowell, or Manchester, while their abstraction destroys that which had been given to the vicinity of Salamanca, or Toledo. The natural powers remain the same, but they have no value.

The banks of rivers possess natural advantages which are supposed to be the causes of rent being paid. We will examine how far this is correct. A settlement takes place

Travels into Bokhara, Vol. I. p. 31. Am. edition.