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 may or may not have something to be said for it. Their argument, if I understand it right, is this, that rent being the difference in productive power between one piece of land and another, is not due to any exertions of the owner of it, apart of course from any improvements which the owner may have made, in which case they acknowledge that he is entitled to interest on the capital which he has put into it. Otherwise it is simply a gift of nature in the greater fertility of the soil, or a gift from the community which has made the land valuable by crowding in to want to live upon it, or by establishing markets in its neighbourhood, so that its produce is more cheaply and profitably sold. In other words, rent is a present that is put into the pocket of the landowner, by the needs of the community, and so is socially created.

But is it not true that nearly all wealth, including even the wages of labour, is more or less socially created, and is not this distinctive attribute of the rent of land in fact shared by most of the payments which any community makes to its members? It may be quite true that certain lucky landlords have had untold wealth heaped upon them by being fortunate possessors of pieces of ground in London and