on all hands. Immoral bargains are of this kind. But it is a nicer question to determine when the law should interfere either to fix a price, or to strike a balance between the parties among whom the value of a produce is distributed. For example, it would be all but impossible that law or equity should determine the share of the workmen and the capitalist in any product to the development of which both agencies are requisite. Nor is the difficulty less in the case of land. The tenant pays a rent for certain properties inherent in the soil. This rent, as we have seen, constantly tends to being everything which is over and above the cost of producing various articles from the earth, when the demand for such articles enables the producer to sell them at a price in excess of the cost at which they have been produced, this cost including the remuneration of the producer's own labour and the profit on his capital. It is clear then that should this rent, or a portion of this rent, be taken away from the owner of the soil, it will not be to the advantage of any one besides the person who occupies the soil. The portion of rent which the landlord loses the farmer gains; and as, by the very terms of our hypothesis, this rent must be over and above the cost of production, the position of a farmer under such circumstances will be pro tanto that of a landowner. He would, for example, be able to borrow on the security of his portion of the natural powers of the soil. Now we know that these natural powers have been enormously developed by the progress of the art of agriculture. The soil of England produces eight times as much food as it produced 500 years ago, three times as much as it did 250 years ago. But to maintain that the present generation of landowners

has a natural right to the benefit of every improvement which may be induced hereafter on the use of the soil, is not only an extravagant assumption, but cannot be sustained as long as the legislature insists that owners may be dispossessed of their lands at their present value when public exigencies require the sacrifice. It is plain injustice to take such possessions without making full compensation; but it may be matter of the highest policy, when such compensation is made, to establish a body of farmers whose rent shall be permanently fixed, whose holdings shall be incapable of subdivision below a fixed amount, but whose interest in improving the soil should be stimulated by the security which is given them in the fruit of their own intelligence and labour. And surely, as a matter of equity, the outlay of labour and capital is more naturally entitled to the fruits of an improved market and the economy of continued skill than the passive owner is, the value of whose estate grows as he sleeps. The remedy at least for Irish agricultural distress and agrarian disaffection is fixity of tenure, and this fixity can apparently be attained only by granting a permanent ground-rent, representing the average value of the rack-rent, to the landowner, and by securing him in his income by sufficient powers of distress.

My reader will see also that there is another reason which may justify exceptional action on behalf of the Irish cottier, even though it be conceded that no such stringent remedy is needed in the case of the English and Scotch farmer. The latter can protect himself. He will not consent to rent land at such a rate as will not secure him the ordinary profits on capital, the ordinary compen

sation for a laborious and anxious superintendence over his farm. Any attempt to extort exorbitant rents would be defeated, for capitalists would decline to take land on disadvantageous terms. They would transfer their capital to other occupations, or seek an outlet for it in the British colonies or foreign countries. In point of fact, agricultural land in England is rather under than over let, rents rarely reaching the maximum which capitalists, especially those who are inclined to farm a few acres highly, are or would be willing to give, and frequently falling below the price at which ordinary tenant farmers eagerly compete for the privilege of occupying farms.

But the case of the Irish peasant is, as we have seen, totally different. With him there is no alternative to agriculture. He must labour on the land, or starve. He has little option now; he had no option when the fullest possible rent was extorted from his exigencies, when he was constrained to pay a scarcity price for the use of land. In one particular only he was better off than the English farm-labourer. He often contrived, as no poor-law induced him to rely on the enforced contributions of others, to secrete a little store which availed him for emigration; for the Irish emigration, great as it was, was spontaneous, and unassisted by government. But pending this movement, he was wholly at the mercy of the landowners, as he now is in a modified degree.

The claim of tenant right—that is, the demand to be compensated for the actual outlay of capital in the improvement of the soil-is in effect an assertion that the farmer is unprotected against the landowner. In

England and Scotland the wrong of which the Irish complain is not likely to be committed on a large scale; for public opinion is a powerful corrective to such a practice. The English tenant farmers, as Adam Smith observed, constantly lay out great amounts of capital on the land which they occupy, and are yet unsecured against the cupidity of the landowner. But the insecurity was and is only apparent. The tenant is virtually protected by the disreputable publicity which would be given to a sudden eviction, or a dishonest appropriation of the tenants' improvements. Whether indeed improvement be checked by the fact that the tenancy is legally precarious, is a question which Arthur Young answered negatively, and reasonably so, and which, with equal reason, can be answered now with the same negative.

CHAPTER XIV.

Demand and Supply.

As we have several times seen, the keystone of society, from the point of view which the economist takes, is that capacity for and disposition towards the mutual exchange of services and utilities which is manifested in its members. On this aspect every one wishes to buy and every one wishes to sell.

The words Demand and Supply have been adopted by economists to express those states of mind. But every one who buys, sells; and, pari ratione, every one who sells, buys; the completion of demand and supply

being an act of exchange in which both are interlaced. My reader will remember that the interposition of money merely postpones the actual termination of the true exchange, by enabling the recipient of money to use his pleasure in selecting the time which shall be most convenient for the completion of the transaction; the function of money being like that implement in mechanics which is called an endless screw.

The origin of demand is the sense of necessity, utility, or convenience. The condition of human life is that it must be maintained by the products of labour. The condition of social life is that different persons should be engaged in different pursuits. A continuous supply of food must be afforded in order that man may exist; and food is got by labour. Hence the earliest and most essential function of labour is the supply of food; the possibility of any other than agricultural labour being practised by any community, depending on the precedent condition that such labourers as are engaged in procuring food can produce more than they must needs consume themselves. The machinery available for these ends must show a surplus produce over that which it expends in maintaining its own activity. As then the demand for food is incessant, so, when the supply is straitened, it is urgent. Under such circumstances every other demand is suspended or circumscribed; for utility or convenience give way to necessity. If however this universal want be readily and fully satisfied, the demand for articles of utility or convenience will vary with the habits and tastes of the individual, and with the power which he has of enjoying or using them.

Only a little less urgent than the demand for food is