ON THE PRINCIPLE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY and TAXATION

The produce of the earth—all that is derived from its surface by the united application of labour machinery and capital is divided among three classes of the community; namely the proprietor of the land the owner of the stock or capital necessary for its cultivation and the labourers by whose industry it is cultivated. But in different stages of society the proportions of the whole produce of the earth which will be allotted to each of these classes under the names of rent profit and wages will be essentially different; depending mainly on the actual fertility of the soil on the accumulation of capital and population and on the skill ingenuity and instruments employed in agriculture. To determine the laws which regulate this distribution is the principal problem in Political Economy: much as the science has been improved by the writings of Turgot Stuart Smith Say Sismondi and others they afford very little satisfactory information respecting the natural course of rent profit and wages.