Page:The wealth of nations, volume 1.djvu/257

 regulated by that of corn, in which the fertility of Britain is not much inferior to that of either of those two countries.

If in any country the common and favorite vegetable food of the people should be drawn from a plant of which the most common land, with the same or nearly the same culture, produced a much greater quantity than the most fertile does of corn, the rent of the landlord, or the surplus quantity of food which would remain to him, after paying the labor and replacing the stock of the farmer together with its ordinary profits, would necessarily be much greater. Whatever was the rate at which labor was commonly maintained in that country, this greater surplus could always maintain a greater quantity of it, and consequently enable the landlord to purchase or command a greater quantity of it. The real value of his rent, his real power and authority, his command of the necessaries and conveniences of life with which the labor of other people could supply him, would necessarily be much greater.

A rice field produces a much greater quantity of food than the most fertile cornfield. Two crops in the year from thirty to sixty bushels each are said to be the ordinary produce of an acre. Though its cultivation, therefore, requires more labor, a much greater surplus remains after maintaining all that labor. In those rice countries, therefore, where rice is the common and favorite vegetable food of the people, and where the cultivators are chiefly maintained with it, a greater share of this greater surplus should belong to the landlord than in corn countries. In Carolina, where the planters, as in other British colonies, are generally both farmers and landlords, and where rent consequently is confounded with profit, the cultivation of rice is found to be more profitable than that of corn, though