It is a great mistake to suppose that the effects of a fall in the
price of corn on cultivation may be fully compensated by a
diminution of rents. Rich land which yields a large net rent, may
indeed be kept up in its actual state, notwithstanding a fall in the
price of its produce: as a diminution of rent may be made entirely
to compensate this fall and all the additional expenses that belong
to a rich and highly taxed country. But in poor land, the fund of
rent will often be found quite insufficient for this purpose. There
is a good deal of land in this country of such a quality that the
expenses of its cultivation, together with the outgoings of poor
rates, tithes and taxes, will not allow the farmer to pay more than
a fifth or sixth of the value of the whole produce in the shape of
rent. If we were to suppose the prices of grain to fall from seventy
five shillings to fifty shillings the quarter, the whole of such a
rent would be absorbed, even if the price of the whole produce of
the farm did not fall in proportion to the price of grain, and
making some allowance for a fall in the price of labour. The regular
cultivation of such land for grain would of course be given up, and
any sort of pasture, however scanty, would be more beneficial both
to the landlord and farmer.

But a diminution in the real price of corn is still more efficient,
in preventing the future improvement of land, than in throwing land,
which has been already improved, out of cultivation. In all
progressive countries, the average price of corn is never higher
than what is necessary to continue the average increase of produce.
And though, in much the greater part of the improved lands of most
countries, there is what the French economists call a disposable
produce, that is, a portion which might be taken away without