OP TERRITORIAL WEALTH.
THE riches proceeding from land should be the first to engage the attention of an economist or a legislator. They are the most necessary of all, because it is from the ground that our subsistence is derived; because they furnish the materials for every other kind of labour; and lastly, be cause, in preparation, they constantly employ the half, much more than the half, of all the nation. The class of people who cultivate the ground are particularly valuable for bodily qualities fitted to make excellent sol diers, and for mental qualities fitted to make good citizens. The happiness of a rural population is also more easily provided for than that of a city population; the progress of mis kind of wealth is more easily followed; and go vernment is more culpable when it allows agriculture to decay, because it almost always lies in the power of govern ment to make it flourish.
The annual revenue of land, or the annual crop, is de composed, as we observed above, in the following man ner. One part of the fruits, produced by labour, is des tined to pay the proprietor for the assistance which the earth has given to the labour of men, and also for the in terest of all the capital successively employed to improve the soil. This portion alone is called the net revenue. Another part of the fruits replaces what has been con sumed in executing the labour to which the crop is due, the seed, and all the cultivator's advances. Economists call this portion the resumption. Another part remains for a profit to the person who directed the labours of the ground: it is proportionate to his industry and the capital advanced by him. Government likewise takes a share of all those fruits, and by various imposts diminishes the proprietor's rent, the cultivator's profit, and the day-la• bourer's wages, in order to form a revenue for another class of persons. Nor do the fruits distributed among the workmen, the superintendent of the labour, and the pro prietor, entirely remain with them in kind: after having kept a portion requisite for their subsistence, the whole then equally part with what remains, in exchange for ob jects produced by the industry of towns; and it is by means of this exchange, that all other classes of the nation are supplied with food.
The net revenue of territorial produce is considered to be that portion which remains with proprietors after the expenses of cultivation have been paid. Proprietors fre quently imagine that a system of cultivation is the better, the higher those rents are : what concerns the nation, however, what should engage the economist's undivided attention, is the gross produce, or the total amount of the crop ; by which subsistence is provided for the whole nation, and the comfort of all classes is secured. The former comprehends but the revenue of the rich and idle; the latter farther comprehends the revenue of all such as labour, or cause their capital to labour.
But a gradual increase of the gross produce may itself be the consequence of a state of suffering,—if the popu lation, growing too numerous, can no longer find a suffi cient recompense in the wages of labour, and if, struggling without protection against the proprietors of land, to whom limitation of number gives all the advantage of a monopo ly, that population is reduced to purchase, by excessive labour, so small an augmentation of produce, as to leave it constantly depressed by want. There is no department of political economy which ought not to be judged in its re lation to the ha mess of in general ; and a sys tem of social AEI. is always bad when the greater part of the population suffers under it.
Commercial wealth is augmented and distributed by exchange; and even the produce of the ground, so soon as it is gathered in, belongs likewise to commerce. Ter ritorial wealth, on the other hand, is created by means of permanent contracts. With regard to it, the economist's attention should first be directed to the progress of culti vation; next to the mode in which the produce of the harvest is distributed among those who contribute to its growth ; and lastly, to the nature of those rights which belong to the proprietors of land, and to the effects result ing from an alienation of their property.