I have just remarked that Mill's originality is less conspicuous in
relation to the economic theory of land than in other problems of
political economy, but the reader must not understand me from this to
say, that he has not very largely contributed to the elucidation of
this topic. He has indeed done so, though not, as is commonly
supposed, by setting aside principles established by his predecessors,
but, as his manner was, while accepting those principles, by
introducing a new premise into the argument. The new premise
introduced in this case was the influence of custom as modifying the
action of competition. The existence of an active competition, on the
one hand between farmers seeking farms, on the other between farming
and other modes of industry as offering inducements to the investment
of capital, is a constant assumption in the reasoning by which Ricardo
arrived at his theory of rent. Granting this assumption, it followed
that farmers as a rule would pay neither higher nor lower rents than
would leave them in possession of the average profits on their capital
current in the country. Mill fully acknowledged the force of this
reasoning, and accepted the conclusion as true wherever the conditions
assumed were realized; but he proceeded to point out, that, in point
of fact, the conditions are not realized over the greater portion of
the world, and, as a consequence, that the rent actually paid by the
cultivators to the owners of the soil by no means, as a general rule,
corresponds with that portion of the produce which Ricardo considered
as properly "rent.
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