There are several circumstances which check and retard, without arresting the gradual rise of raw produce, by augmenting its supply:

First. The resort to poorer and poorer soils, the cultivation of which is made profitable only by the previous rise of raw produce, and which thus aids in meeting the increasing demand for food.

Secondly. By drawing supplies from a greater distance. The extent of this resource depends upon the facilities of transportation. In a country of which roads are bad, this source of supply has a narrow field of action; but when there are good roads and canals, supplies can be obtained from a distance proportioned to the saving in the cost of carriage. Since the introduction of iron railways, supplies may now be obtained from a distance perhaps of one hundred miles at as small a cost as was formerly required for their transportation in a wagon twenty-five or thirty miles.

Thirdly. Increasing the productiveness of the soil by an outlay of capital in the purchase of manures and vegetable stimulants, such as guano, gypsum, and the like. These often increase the value of the products of the soil far beyond their cost; and it sometimes may be so great as to make the increased supply exceed the increased demand, and thus, for the time, lower the price of raw produce. But even then, inasmuch as the landlord gains more by the increased quantity than he loses by the fall of price, rents would thereby be raised.* To the above temporary checks to the advance in price of raw produce we may add improvements in husbandry; whether by the mode of tillage, the rotation of crops, or by ameliorating processes, such as the turnip or clover culture. But these improvements, like the use of manures, while they tend to lower the price of raw produce by augmenting the supply beyond the temporary demand, tend also to raise rents:

* It deserves to be remarked that all these three expedients for increasing the supplies of raw produce to meet the demand of growing numbers have been referred to for the purpose of value and price. The natural effect of such improvements is unquestionably to lessen the price of raw produce; but an increased demand and consumption would then be as natural a consequence as had been the fall of price; and such increased demand, checking the fall of price before the reduction was in proportion to the enlarged supply, the market value of the whole crop would be greater than it had previously been; and the clear profit or rent would consequently be higher.

First. Because, whatever may be the addition to the supply of the means of subsistence, population will ultimately raise the demand to the same level; and, the price being also thereby raised, rents must continue to rise.

Secondly. Without waiting for a further increase of mouths to be fed, the immediate effect of such improvements is to raise rents; since here, as in the increased supply of raw produce, from a further outlay of capital, as already mentioned, the landlord will gain more by the addition to the quantity than he would lose by the reduction of price.

It has indeed been maintained by writers of reputation that the effect of improvements in agriculture, whether in saving labor or increasing the productiveness of the soil, is to lower rents; but this conclusion seems to be directly at variance with the laws of explaining the rise and progress of rent, though they, - the two first always, and the third partially, - as well as rent, are the natural effect of the rise of raw produce, caused by the increase of population.

The preceding view cannot be impugned except by assuming that the demand for raw produce, in proportion to the population, is a fixed quantity, which cannot be increased. But the great difference in the corn crops of every country, according to the seasons,- they being twice or thrice as much in a good season as a bad one, - shows that the consumption even of corn is susceptible of great contraction or expansion, according to the greater or less abundance of the supply. When the supply is small, the consumption is lessened, partly from choice, but still more from necessity; and cheaper food is substituted for the more costly. But when the supply is large, the consumption is more liberal, both as to the quantity and quality; and there is more waste, more dispensed in charity, more consumed in manufactures, and lastly, more, from the reduced price, can find a market at a distance. If these were not the natural consequences of an increased production, the agricultural class would gain more by a short crop - supposing it to be general - than by a large one; and the instinctive sagacity of self-interest would be at fault with farmers when they pray, as they ever do, for fruitful seasons, though their neighbors should share in the same good fortune, and when they feel assured that in bad seasons no rise of price can adequately compensate them for the shortness of the crops. Another circumstance which tends to raise rents is the improvement in the means of transportation by canals and roads. The chief cause of the difference between the prices of raw produce in two places is the cost of transportation; and all, or nearly all, that can be saved of this expense, is so much added to the exchangeable value of the produce.

The same saving also enlarges the sphere of the market, and causes a traffic between places, which, at the previous cost of transport, could not be carried on without loss. Thus, by means of railways, the oyster trade is now extended from the Atlantic coast to every portion of the interior; and though many places may, in this way, lose a portion of their former supplies of provisions, yet this loss may be compensated, or more than compensated, by the new supplies then afforded from more distant districts. Thus, if New York now draw off from Philadelphia much of the butter, milk, poultry, and fruits, with which the latter city had been previously supplied, she, in turn, is also furnished with new supplies of the like articles from more distant sources, by which enlarged traffic, both buyers and sellers, that is, both producers and consumers, are benefited.

In truth, a very considerable portion of the labor of every community is expended, not in the business of producing or fabricating commodities, but merely in transporting these products of industry from one place to another, where they have greater value; and whatever can be saved of this expense of transport is so much added to the revenue of the community.

There are circumstances which have a direct tendency to lower rents. One of these is a diminution of the population, however caused, whether by epidemic diseases, scarcity, or emigration - always supposing that the population was not previously too dense for the whole of it to be profitably employed. This redundancy of numbers seemed to have existed in Ireland a few years since; for, after an efflux of population so great as to make the numbers less by the census of 1851 than they had been by the census of 1841, an encouragement was given to the employment of labor which benefited the community as well as the laboring classes, and consequently raised rents.

The emigration which is continually taking place from the Southern to the Western and Southwestern

States, tends to keep rents stationary in the first-named States; and, in some few districts which have declined in population, rents may have somewhat diminished.

Taxation is another cause of the fall of rents. A tax on the land being so much taken from its profits, is the same as so much taken from rent. A tax on labor, too, by increasing the cost of cultivation, would have a similar tendency.

Town lots, like land in the country, have a price, and consequently yield a rent according to the profit which they can afford to the occupant. But the sources of profit in the two cases are very different. In the case of arable land, the profit arises from the productiveness of the soil, but in the case of town lots it arises from the facilities afforded to industry.

Men are induced to congregate in cities and towns, partly by the social instinct, and partly for the benefits of co-operation, by which many things are done sooner and better than could be effected by a single individual, and many more which he could not perform at all.

The proportion of the population thus congregated is apt to increase with the increasing density of numbers. In the United States, where the population is as yet thin, the cities and towns of above three thousand inhabitants, contained but one-sixth of the whole population in 1850. In 1840, they contained not one-tenth. In England, such towns contain about one-half of the population.

They are more favorable to the cultivation of science and the arts of every kind. If they also more favor human depravity and misery, they afford readier means of punishing the one, and of alleviating the other. The modes of human happiness are so different in town and country life, that it is difficult to compare them; but whatever may be the result of the comparison, the constant tendency of cities, in all free and industrious communities, to increase, is inevitable.

Cities and towns, according to the numbers there congregated, offer the best field for buying and selling, and obtaining the profits of commerce. Lots, therefore, increase in value with the size of the town, until a certain point is reached, and the rents of such lots will be in proportion to their price. As a general rule, a site for a shop in a city is valuable in proportion to the number of persons who have a ready access to it, which number will be partly in proportion to the population of the city, and partly to the accessibility of the particular site - twenty, or even fifty, times as many persons commonly passing in a day by one lot or site, as in some others. The same circumstances which raise the value of the lots, in the same degree raise the rents, so that while lots generally in small towns, and some of them on the borders of large ones, may sell for little more than land in the vicinity, others may sell for a hundred times as much.

Other circumstances may occasionally enhance the value of town lots, as when they afford pleasant prospects, are open to pure air, or are in agreeable neighborhoods; but it is the advantage which some sites possess over others for traffic which constitutes their highest pecuniary value. In the same degree that cities thrive in business, and increase in population, the shops improve in the extent, the variety, and the attractiveness of their wares, and rents rise in proportion. When the population diminishes, rents proportionally decline.

The rent paid for houses in town consists, in addition to the rent of the lot, of the interest on the cost of the building, with some allowance for ordinary repairs, and gradual decay.

It may be remarked that land, including lots and houses in town, yield less than the average profits of capital, partly on account of the greater security of the capital, and partly because, being visible to all, and appreciable by all, they confer on the proprietor somewhat more of influence in society than personal property.

It often happens, in cities, that one person owns the house, and another the ground on which it stands. For this, the owner of the house pays a ground-rent, and the house is a security for its payment. It is thus a favorite mode of investment with capitalists, and hence nearly all the houses in London pay a ground-rent. It, however, occasionally happens in declining towns, or when buildings have been erected on sites unfavorable to business, or beyond its demands, that the house and lot together will not sell for as much as will pay the ground-rent.