from the victorious host, over all other sounds of joy or anguish; a rapturous and glowing enthusiasm is lighted up in the reader's mind, strong and lasting as any that the magic of poetry can ever produce. Never was hero arrayed in more glowing brilliance, or led a more magnificent triumph.

Night ended the slaughter of the Moors, but where was he, whose return all hearts anxiously expected-let the poet answer, and conclude his own story.

"Upon the banks

Of Sella was Orelio found, his legs

And flanks incarnadin'd, his poitral smear'd
With froth and foam, and gore, his silver mane
Sprinkled with blood, which hung on every hair,
Aspersed like dew-drops: trembling there he stood
From the toil of battle, and at times sent forth
His tremulous voice far echoing loud and shrill
A frequent, anxious cry, with which he seemed
To call the master whom he loved so well,
And who had thus again forsaken him.
Siverian's helm and cuirass on the grass
Lay near, and Julian's sword, its hilt and chain
Clotted with blood-but where was he whose hand
Had wielded it so well that glorious day?-
Days, months, and years, and generations past,
And centuries held their course, before, far off,
Within a hermitage near Viscus walls,

A humble tomb was found, which bore inscribed
In ancient characters King Roderick's name.”

But a very few words more-and we release our readers. Our opinion of the work, which we have gone through, it must be quite unnecessary to pronounce. Other critics will tell them perhaps of faults, which we have passed over in silence, of some few words not indeed newly coined, but reproduced from obso lete books, where they might quite as well have remained still forgotten; of some lines feeble or prosaic, of a rhythm not always harmonious, or sufficiently varied, of some few pages of comparative languor, and of some ideas, against which a small exertion of ordinary wit, aided by a little misrepresentation, may succeed in raising a laugh. We too have not been blind to this, we have seen it with sorrow-but from a great master of our art, one who well knew, though he did not always practise the right rules of taste, we have learned how contemptibly casy it is to notice such defects. And when we weighed them against the sterling and uncommon merits of the poem, which are not scattered here and there as beauties, but pervade it so entirely, that they become its essence, we felt ashamed to waste our paper,

or

or the time of our readers in pointing them out. They will strike minds not more than commonly acute, and afford the envious amusement quite soon enough without our aid-but the criticism that triumphs over them will be forgotten, when the beauties which have excited our admiration will live in the enthusiasm of the young and ingenuous, and be consecrated by the applause of the wise and good to a sure and deserved immortality.

ART. III.

An Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent, &c. By the Rev. T. R. Malthus. Ss. Murray.

1815.

WE were never so much puzzled to make out the meaning of any thing that Mr. Malthus has written, as of this little Essay on Rent; and, to avenge ourselves on him, we feel strongly inclined to maintain, that he has not a very clear conception of the subject himself. At all events, we would advise Mr. M. to give up publishing pamphlets on political economy, whensoever a question starts which invites much public and keen discussion; because we apprehend that, in this way, he runs the risk of frittering down his high reputation by hasty writing, and more particularly, by descending into the arena of vulgar and heated contention, where he must mix with other pamphleteers, who may not be at all times disposed to treat him with the deference he deserves. The tract under our review is itself a striking proof of the danger which is incurred, by sending to the press a piece of composition before the ink is dried on the paper; for, candidly speaking, it is a mere rough draught, in which the thoughts not only want arrangement, but, what is more essential, they want that clearness which is necessary to make them understood. We proceed, however, to the subject, determined to avoid, as much as possible, that metaphysical nicety, and researched mode of investigation, with which it has usually been examined.

What, then, is rent? It is a premium given for the use of any thing; such as a book by the night, a coach by the day, a house or a piece of land by the year. There is no difficulty in this view of the matter; and in fact there are no difficulties in the subject, but what have been created by men who had determined to think deeply where no depth was required. But what is the origin of rent? This question naturally carries us back to a time of the greatest simplicity, when one man would give a sheep's skin for the use of a tan pit, another a portion of wheat

for

for the use of an oven, and a third a measure of malt for the loan of a brewing-vat. Prior to such an epoch in human history, land was the property of him who had industry or skill enough to scrape its surface, and to scatter into it a little seed; and whenever by this scraping he had rendered it fitter for bearing crops than the surrounding soil, he would feel entitled, provided there was any thing like protection of property known amongst his tribe, to ask a small share of the produce from any one who might chuse to occupy a part of his farm. The share of produce stipulated for, would be the rent.-Suppose in the same community some one had been ingenious enough to construct a machine for ploughing, there can be little doubt that a competition would arise for the use of this instrument, and that the inventor would demand a certain hire for the loan of it. The amount of produce, then, which measured the value of the hire, would constitute the rent of the instrument. But a number of writers, and Mr. Malthus among the rest, wish to go a step farther back than this, and to discover the origin of rent in the capability which exists in the soil of becoming subservient to the wants of man, and which is regarded by them in a special sense, as the gift of nature. But are not timber, skins, iron, and wool equally capable of being rendered useful to man, and are not they, as much as land, the gift of nature; provided by divine goodness to supply his wants, and to exercise his industry? The land in its original, uncultivated state, is like the raw skin, or the tree in the forest; it possesses the power of fertility, which, when exerted and directed by the industry of man, will afford him an ample compensation in the abundance and variety of its productions: whereas, when improved by culture and enriched with manure, it resembles the skin in the form of gloves or shoes, and the tree in that of a ship. The materials of both we have granted to us by nature; and the rent of the land in the one case, and of the ship in the other, is equally referable to the labour which has been bestowed respectively upon these materials. If the timber was useless until it was appropriated and moulded into a ship, so was the land, before its weeds and brushwood were cleared away, and its soil turned up to the sun. There is, therefore, no necessity to obscure the subject by identifying the source of rent with the natural capabilities of land, because the capability also which exists in wood of being converted into a steam-boat or a post-chaise, may be equally regarded as the reason why a hire is exacted for their use. Nor is the analogy weakened by the consideration, that the labour of man on land is rewarded with more valuable return than labour on any other subject; for it must be obvious that this value bears a strict relation to the predominating wants of any particular society, and

that,

that, although raw produce is in great demand in all rich and populous countries, the products of manufacturing industry are. more highly valued every where else.

The simplest notion of rent, therefore, is that which regards the annual payment made for land, in the light of a premium given for its use, without at all attempting to explain on what principle he who uses it is enabled to afford such a premium, or why he who calls himself proprietor is enabled to ask it. Land is thus regarded as an instrument, for the loan of which, during a specified time, a certain hire is obtained; which hire, of course, will be greater or less according to the goodness of the said instrument, and to the extent of the competition for possessing it. In fact, it stands in the same point of view as fixed capital of all kinds, which, if the owner does not choose to employ it himself, he lets out to others at the current price which the market brings.

Dr. Smith very philosophically divided all capital into two kinds, fixed and circulating; the former constituting the stock which remains locked up or vested in a particular trade, the latter being that which sets it in motion, and extracts from it the profit which it is fitted to yield. One man, accordingly, vests his fortune in land, another in erecting cotton-mills, and a third in setting up an iron-foundry. If the first applies to his fixed capital a corresponding portion of circulating capital, he becomes a cultivator, and farms, as it is usually expressed, his own land; in which case he is entitled to profit on two kinds of stock, namely, the purchase money vested in the land, and the capital employed in raising crops. If the second and the third carry on themselves the particular lines of business, for the uses of which they sunk a portion of their stock, they, like the land-owner, will derive a return both from a fixed and a circulating capital, because, like him, they fill the places of landlord and tenant. But if all three should choose to let their properties, the first his land, the second bis mills, and the third his foundry, in what respect, we would ask, do the rents in the three cases differ? Do not the proprietors receive, in the three supposed instances, a certain premium or usufruct for the temporary possession of their fixed capital; which premium, of course, is all along understood to rise or fall with the demand that may happen to exist for farms, cotton-mills, or iron-factories.

The circumstance which puzzles our metaphysical economists, in all their reasonings on rent, turns on the fact, that man does not make land, as he erects buildings, digs mines, and constructs machinery. This is admitted; but neither does he create stones, generate ores, nor give to steam its expansive energies. He avails himself of the qualities which experience detects in the material

material world, and turns them to his own subserviency. So is it with regard to the fructifying properties of soil; which, if we compare the produce of a well cultivated field with the crops. which it would yield spontaneously, may be said to be wholly referable to the application of human skill and labour. It is in consequence of draining, clearing, weeding, and, above all, of mixing and exciting the soil with appropriate manures, that the food of man is extracted from the ground; on which account, we need not hesitate to simplify the inquiry into rent, by representing it as the interest of the money laid out in the purchase and improvement of land.

All this operose inanity in the shape of reasoning, in which we have indulged, is excusable only upon the ground that it has become fashionable of late to be intricate on plain subjects. We give it up, however, and proceed to the contents of Mr. Malthus's pamphlet.

This gentleman, after stating what rent is, the immediate cause of which, he says, is obviously the excess of price above the cost of production at which raw produce sells in the market, goes en to institute an inquiry into the cause or causes of the high price of raw produce.

"The causes of the high price of raw produce may be stated to be three.

"First, and mainly, That quality of the earth, by which it can be made to yield a greater portion of the necessaries of life than is required for the maintenance of the persons employed on the Jand.

"2dly, That quality peculiar to the necessaries of life of being able to create their own demand, or to raise up a number of demanders in proportion to the quantity of necessaries produced.

"And, 3dly, The comparative scarcity of the most fertile land. "The qualities of the soil and of its products, here noticed as the primary causes of the high price of raw produce, are the gifts of nature to man. They are quite unconnected with monopoly, and yet are so absolutely essential to the existence of rent, that without them, no degree of scarcity or monopoly could have occasioned that excess of the price of raw produce, above the cost of production, which shews itself in this form.

"If, for instance, the soil of the earth had been such, that, however well directed might have been the industry of man, he could not have produced from it more than was barely sufficient to maintain those, whose labour and attention were necessary to its products; though, in this case, food and raw materials would have been evidently scarcer than at present, and the land might have been, in the same manner, monopolized by particular owners; yet it is quite clear, that neither rent, nor any essential surplus produce of the land in the form of high profits, could have existed.