Rent of Land

It has been argued in Book V. that the rent of land is no unique fact, but simply the chief species of a large genus of economic phenomena; and that the theory of the rent of land is no isolated economic doctrine, but merely one of the chief applications of a particular corollary from the general theory of demand and supply; that there is a continuous gradation from the true rent of those free gifts which have been appropriated by man, through the income derived from permanent improvements of the soil, to those yielded by farm and factory buildings, steam-engines and less durable goods. In this and the following chapter we are to make a special study of the net income of land. That study has two parts. One part relates to the total quantity of the net income, or producer’s surplus from land: the other to the way in which this income is distributed between those who have an interest in the land. The first is general, whatever be the form of land tenure. We will begin with it, and suppose that the cultivation of the land is undertaken by its owner.