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space permit, I might furnish dozens of quotations to show how common this conviction has been to every school of politics and class of society.[1]
To attribute such a view to landlord stupidity and selfishness is even more gratuitous. When did a tradesman ever complain of the multitude of his
customers, or a manufacturer of the easiness of the labour-market? And what is the owner of an estate other than a trader in land? His tenants are his customers; the more strenuous their competition, the higher his rents, and the denser their number, the more keenly will they compete;[2]
- ↑ "As a means of alleviating the distress occasioned by the removal of tenants, it was proposed by the Select Committee on the state of Ireland in 1832, that public money should be given in aid of such sums as may be paid by a landlord to a removed and destitute tenant, with a view to its being employed in emigration."—Digest Devon Commission, Summary, p. 1113.
- ↑ "Rent being regulated by competition, depends upon the relation between the demand for land, and the supply of it. The demand for land depends on the number of competitors, and the competitors are the whole rural population. The effect, therefore, of this tenure (cottier tenancies) is to bring the principle of population to act directly on the land, and not, as in England, on capital. Rent, in this state of things, depends on the proportion between population and land. As the land is a fixed quantity, while population has an unlimited power of increase; unless something checks that increase, the competition for land soon forces up rent to the highest point consistent with keeping the population alive. The effects, therefore, of cottier tenure depend on the extent to which the capacity of population to increase is controlled, either by custom, by individual prudence, or by starvation and disease." Mill's Political Economy p. 392.
