improve) Ricardo's proof that rent does not enter into price. The
"burdens" on land are really first charges on the rackrent and do not
affect a year-to-year tenant at all. When a farmer meditates taking a
farm he asks not merely what is the rent: he inquires what is the
tithe, what the average amount of the rates (and is that likely to
increase or diminish during the next seven years); the intending
tenant only wants to know what sum in all he will have to pay for the
farm; whether any of this payment is called tithe or not, or whether
some of it is quit-rent, or whether he is to pay the land tax for his
landlord's convenience,--about all this he cares nothing; they are
mere questions of names to him.



5. MAKING THE MOST OF OUR LAND.

John S. Mill, following W. T. Thornton, advocated a system of petty
proprietors against the English system of large farms with hired
labourers. Figures were quoted to show the splendid produce got by
petty proprietors in France and elsewhere--as the result, however, of
infinite toil. The petty proprietors were, moreover, shown to be much
better off than our hired labourers; and the magic of property
combined with independence was represented as having produced a
superior class. These things may have been so, at least in some cases
and particular countries, at the date (before 1846) when J. S. Mill
originally put forward these views. The liberal, and radical writers
on political economy and sociology still follow (most of them) on the
same side, which has become in a manner historically the liberal
side. There is much against it.