what is already cultivated.

It is equally true, that without the same tendency to a rise
of rents, occasioned by the operation of the same causes, it
cannot answer to lay out fresh capital in the improvement of old
land - at least upon the supposition, that each farm is already
furnished with as much capital as can be laid out to advantage,
according to the actual rate of profits.

It is only necessary to state this proposition to make its
truth appear. It certainly may happen, and I fear it happens
frequently, that farmers are not provided with all the capital
which could be employed upon their farms, at the actual rate of
agricultural profits. But supposing they are so provided, it
implies distinctly, that more could not be applied without loss,
till, by the operation of one or more of the causes above
enumerated, rents had tended to rise.

It appears then, that the power of extending cultivation and
increasing produce, both by the cultivation of fresh land and the
improvement of the old, depends entirely upon the existence of
such prices, compared with the expense of production, as would
raise rents in the actual state of cultivation.

But though cultivation cannot be extended, and the produce of
the country increased, but in such a state of things as would
allow of a rise of rents, yet it is of importance to remark, that
this rise of rents will be by no means in proportion to the
extension of cultivation, or the increase of produce. Every
relative fall in the price of the instruments of production, may