Page:Sir William Petty - A Study in English Economic Literature - 1894.djvu/61

62 of legal title, paucity of people, absenteeism, bad administration of justice. The rent of land will fall when trades and arts increase (233). This may be only temporary, for people who live in towns spend more commodities, and make greater consumptions, than when they lived more sordidly (256). Great need of corn raises its price, and consequently the rent of the land on which it is grown. "If the corn which feedeth London.... be brought forty miles thither, then the corn growing within a mile of London.... shall have added unto its natural price, so much as the charge of bringing it thirty-nine miles doth amount unto" (35). Again, the rent of land near populous places will increase by reason of the pleasure and honor of having land there. In different countries the rent of land will differ, according to the natural, civil and religious opinions of the people living in the country (37).

The wages of labor and the rent of land vary inversely. If the wages of labor get a larger share of the product then rent must fall (233). We have already seen from his experiment for finding natural rent what he understands by the natural wages of labor. As he estimated in a rough way the extrinsic value of the rent of land, so the value of each individual as a labor unit might be had by using the ordinary or average price for a slave in the markets of the East. There is, however, a more exact way. Suppose the people of England be 6 millions and the expense annually per head 40 millions. Let the yearly rent of land be 7½ millions, and the profit on personal estates be the same, i. e., together 15 millions. It is obvious that the difference between 15 millions and 40 millions has been created by the labor of the