When the landlord, whose case we have supposed, resided upon his estate, he probably received his rental direct from his tenants. That rental was the landlord's share of as many quarters of corn, as many head of oxen and sheep, as many fleeces of wool, as many fowls, as many pounds of butter, and so forth, as the estate produced. Three or four centuries ago the landlord's share was paid in kind : for the convenience of all parties it is now paid in money, or, in other words, the tenant sells the land lord's share, as well as his own share, and pays over the amount of his share to the landlord, in a money-rent, instead of in produce. When the landlord removes to a distant part of the country, this ar rangement of modern times becomes doubly convenient. The rental is col lected by a steward, and is remitted, usually through a banker, to the land lord. By this process, the produce of the land may be most advantageously sold ; and the landlord receives the amount of bia &bare at his own door, without even the risk of sending money from one part of the kingdom to another.
If the landlord becomes an absentee, the process of remitting his rental assumes a more complicated shape. We will sup pose that he settles in the Netherlands. His means of living there depend upon the punctual transmission of the value of his share of the corn, cattle, and other produce which grow upon his estate in England. To make the remittance in bullion would not only be expensive, but unsafe ; and, indeed, remittances in bul lion can never be made to any consider able extent (such as the demands of ab sentees would require) from one country to another ; for these large remittances would produce a scarcity of money at home, and then the bullion being raised in value, its remittance would conse quently cease. Although the expenses of our armies in the Peninsula, in 1812-13, amounted to nearly 32,000,0001., the re mittances in coin were little more than 3,000,0001. Nearly all foreign remit tances are carried on by bills of ex change. The operation of a bill of ex change, in connection with the absentee landlord, would be this :—He is a con sumer now, in great part, of foreign pro duce ; he may require many articles of English produce, through the effect of habit ; but whether or no, there must be an export of English goods to some coun try, to the amount of the foreign goods which he consumes, otherwise his remit twice; could not be made to him. He draws a bill upon England, which he pays, through a banker, to a merchant at Antwerp. This bill represents his share of the corn and cattle upon his farm ; but the merchant at Antwerp, who does not want corn and cattle, transmits it to a merchant at London, in payment for cotton goods and hardware, which he does want. Or there may be another process. The agent, in England, of the absentee landlord, may procure a bill upon the merchant at Antwerp, which he transmits to the English landlord ; and the merchant at Antwerp, recognising in that bill the representation of a debt which he has incurred to England, hands over the proceeds to the bearer of the bill.
In either case the bill represents the value of English commodities exported to fo reigners. It is alleged that the consump tion of an English resident in a foreign state, out of a capital derived from Eng land, produces, in principle, the same indirect effects upon English industry, as his partial or entire consumption of foreign goods in England. His con sumption of foreign goods abroad is equi valent to an importation of foreign goods into England ; and that consumption, it is said, produces a correspondent expor tation of English goods to the foreigner. If England sends out a thousand pounds' worth of her exports in consequence of the absentee's residence abroad, it is maintained that it cannot be said that she gets nothing in return. She would have had to pay a thousand pounds to the land lord wherever he resided ; and the only question is, whether she pays the amount less advantageously for the national wel fare to the absentee, than to the resident at home. The political economists, whose opinions we have endeavoured to exhibit, maintain that she does not. It is probable that a good deal of the difficulty which this question presents has arisen from the circumstance that the subtraction of a particular amount of expenditure from a particular district is felt in the imme diate locality as an evil, while the benefit which still remains to the whole country is not perceived, because it is universally diffused.
But it would be a widely different question if the absentee landlord, who had been accustomed to expend a certain portion of bis income in the improvement of his estate in England, were to suspend those improvements, and invest his sur plus capital in undertakings in a foreign country. This the political economists, who have been most consistent in their opinions as to the effects of absentee con sumption, never maintained : if they had, they would have confounded the great distinction between accumulation and consumption, upon which the very foun dations of their science rest. In many eases the smaller consumption of an absentee, in a country where the neces saries of life are cheap, enables him to accumulate with greater ease than he could at home ; and this accumulation is, in nearly every case,' invested at home. It is the same thing whether the absentee improves his own estate by the accumulation, or lends the amount of the capital so saved to other encou ragers of industry at home. Nor could the political economists ever have in tended, in maintaining, as a mere ques tion of wealth, that it was a matter of indifference where an income was spent, to put out of view the moral advantages which arise out of a rational course of individual expenditure.