necessity, which Rodbertus and Karl Marx are under, of speaking about normal or social work, of the number of hours usually or on an average necessary to create wealth? If labour is the cause and measure of value, then it must be the labour which has been put into a certain article which is the measure of its value, and not the work which could have been or ought to have been put into it. It would become necessary to make this investigation in each particular case; and I do not understand how the average amount of labour employed can be proposed as a common measure of value. A hundred kilograms of wheat have the same value in a given market, whether they have been produced on fertile land, or on a rebellious soil where twice as much labour was required. Johannisberg, which is worth one pound a bottle, has not required more labour than a light Rhine wine, which is not worth a shilling. The value of corn in the docks varies every day, although it is obviously impossible for the sum of labour which it has cost to change.

The whole theory of Rodbertus rests on this error. Doubtless, if it is admitted as a premise, there can then be no further question about the matter; rent is a robbery, and the whole product ought to belong to the labourer: but it is precisely the point of departure which is wrong.

Neither did Rodbertus completely grasp the theory of Ricardo. He is perpetually arguing as if Ricardo had only assigned one single cause to rent-the difference, namely, between the fertility of soils. The German socialist devoted himself to proving that, even if all the different soils had the same fertility, and the same advantages of situation,-as for example in a circular island of which the centre was a town-a rent would still be formed, if private property was in vogue. He entirely forgot that Ricardo imposed a second condition on the origin of rent; which was that the land should not be an unlimited quantity; in other words, that land must be the object of a monopoly from the moment when population increases. Rent is the inevitable result of two facts: first, the different fertility of soils; second, their limited extent. It is not Law that has created rent; but what

1 Principles of Political Economy, ch. ii.

is true is, that Law can hand over the enjoyment of it either to certain individuals, or to the State or the Commune.

The arguments which Rodbertus has drawn from history and statistics are very far from being decisive. He defended the thesis which Carey developed, and instanced a large number of interesting but inconclusive examples in its support; this thesis was, that the land which was first put under cultivation was not always the best, and that every day fresh land is acquiring a value, and is bringing in more than the original land. This does not overthrow Ricardo's theory; for in this case the rent of the original land diminishes, but it begins to arise from the lands which have recently acquired a value.

Neither do variations in the price of land and of corn, or the alternatives of high and low value which they have undergone in the course of centuries, prove anything against the doctrine of the great English economist. Rodbertus might well produce tables of statistics to prove that the price of cereals in London and in Prussia had not followed the increase in population. It would be useless for him, if he lived at the present day, to appeal to the diminution in the value of land in Europe, and the fall in the price of cereals.

All these variations, be they ever so considerable, are due to certain disturbing causes, and do not touch Ricardo's law itself, as it was formulated by John Stuart Mill. Moreover, how can we rely upon figures which go back to the Middle Ages, and how make allowance for local and accidental circumstances, as well as for changes in the force of statistics? We must study rent in all its bearings, and take the whole globe under consideration. If rent has been lowered of late in Europe in spite of the increase of population, it is because numerous new fields for cultivation have been added to the old, both in India and the Far West, so that rent has sprung up there, or has increased.

Mill has well shown that all agricultural progress which has the effect of increasing the production of food commodities must cause a check on the increase of rents, or even a reduction of them, because it produces a diminution in the value of these commodities. The opening up of new territories has the same

result. But this is only a suspension of Ricardo's law. If population and wealth continue to increase, rent will soon retrace its upward march, as happened before 1873. This will probably happen within twenty years, when all the fertile country of North America has been brought under cultivation.

That which seems to me to be incontestable in the doctrine of Rodbertus is that the share which is returned to labour is not in proportion to the increase in production. It cannot be denied that wages have continuously increased since the beginning of the century. But it would be a bold assumption to affirm that this rise corresponds exactly to the gigantic impetus which the production of all kinds of wealth has received.

We have only to cast a glance round us to be convinced of this. We see comfort spreading, especially in the middle classes, among that class of persons who live on the revenue of a small capital, or who depend on commerce. Survey the towns of Western Europe, and you will find that everywhere people are building enormously, and building well; streets are being multiplied, enlarged, ornamented with handsome façades, and luxury is penetrating into the dwellings. But it is quite otherwise with the homes of the labourers: these are relegated to obscure quarters in the large towns; in the industrial centres they stretch out their lines of sad, monotonous frontage, behind which want and privation are dimly seen.

We can, then, affirm that the labourer has not yet acquired the share which he has a right to in the distribution of the good things of civilization. Rodbertus shows us perfectly clearly the end to be reached-the point where the workman must arrive before he can enjoy the whole fruit of his labours. But must we, then, pretend that neither land nor capital have a part in the work of production? It would be to deny the value of evidence; and yet, if they do have a part in it, they have a right to remuneration, that is, to rent and interest. What we really want is that the modern workman, like the medieval artisan, should become a proprietor of capital and of land, by acquiring shares in the industrial enterprise where he VOL. I.-No. 2.

is employed. Rent, in itself, sanctions a principle of equity and equality, for it renders very even the lot of those who cultivate the land. Without rent those who held the best lands would become too highly favoured. Only, rent, in so far as it represents the natural fertility of the soil, or the result of the pressure of growing population on the means of subsistence, is evidently not the fruit of the labours of the landlords. No principle of justice can, then, be invoked to consecrate it to them. It is par excellence the material for taxation, whether as being the free gift of nature, or as being the result of the general progress of society. That is the principal conclusion to which we are led by our perusal of the works of Rodbertus.

ÉMILE DE LAVELEYE.

Translated by Percy Dearmer, B.A.

Christ Church, Oxford.

SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN A NEW ENGLAND.

THERE is always much interest in the illustration of social

and economic problems, which have to be faced in our own country, by the corresponding experience of other civilized communities; but, perhaps, especially is this true in relation to the New Englands beyond the sea, offshoots from the old stem, and reproducing, although with many important variations, the conditions of our own English character and life. I have been asked to make some slight contribution to this illustration, out of such knowledge as I have gained in the last few years in Australia, from residence in the mother-colony of New South Wales, and not infrequent visits to all the other colonies of the great Australasian group.

As these colonies, though in English idea always taken roughly together as one, in sheer ignorance of the vast area and varying characteristics of the future "Empire of the South "-four-fifths the size of Europe, and stretching from the tropics far down into the temporal zone-differ greatly in their social conditions, I confine myself mainly to the colony in which I lived, and draw all my facts from the official Year-book of 1889-90, there published under Government authority.1

I. It should be understood at once that, even so, we are dealing with a territory about two and a half times the size of the United Kingdom, having an area of 306,000 square miles, and a population of 1,100,000—rather less than four to a square mile-increasing, on an average of the last ten years, by 469 per cent. annually. Immigration, though no longer assisted, is considerable, and it is notable that almost all immigrants are British born. Of this population-naturally, but unfortunately

'The Wealth and Progress of New South Wales in 1889-90. By T. A. Coghlan, Government Statistician. Sydney, 1890.