allow of the employment of a considerable quantity of additional
capital; and when either new land is taken into cultivation, or
the old improved, the increase of produce may be considerable,
though the increase of rents be trifling. We see, in consequence,
that in the progress of a country towards a high state of
cultivation, the quantity of capital employed upon the land, and
the quantity of produce yielded by it, bears a constantly
increasing proportion to the amount of rents, unless
counterbalanced by extraordinary improvements in the modes of
cultivation.(11)

According to the returns lately made to the Board of
Agriculture, the average proportion which rent bears to the value
of the whole produce, seems not to exceed one fifth;(12) whereas
formerly, when there was less capital employed, and less value
produced, the proportion amounted to one fourth, one third, or
even two fifths. Still, however, the numerical difference between
the price of produce and the expenses of cultivation, increases
with the progress of improvement; and though the landlord has a
less share of the whole produce, yet this less share, from the
very great increase of the produce, yields a larger quantity, and
gives him a greater command of corn and labour. If the produce of
land be represented by the number six, and the landlord has one
fourth of it, his share will be represented by one and a half. If
the produce of land be as ten, and the landlord has one fifth of
it, his share will be represented by two. In the latter case,
therefore, though the proportion of the landlord's share to the
whole produce is greatly diminished, his real rent, independently
of nominal price, will be increased in the proportion of from
three to four. And in general, in all cases of increasing