John Stuart Mill: A Criticism with Personal Recollections

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200 APPENDIX.
The doctrine of the science with which Mill s name has been most pro
minently associated, within the last few years, is that which relates to the
economic nature of land, and the consequences to which this should lead in
practical legislation.
It is very commonly believed that on this point Mill
has started aside from the beaten highway of economic thought, and pro
pounded views wholly at variance with those generally entertained by
orthodox economists. No economist need be told that this is an entire
mistake. In truth there is no portion of the economic field in which Mill s
originality is less conspicuous than in that which deals with the land. His
assertion of the peculiar nature of landed property, and again his doctrine
as to the
"
unearned increment
"
of value arising from land with the growth
of society, are simply direct deductions from Ricardo s theory of rent, and
cannot be consistently denied by any one who accepts that theory. All
Mill has done here has been to point the application of principles, all
but universally accepted, to the practical affairs of life. This is not the
place to consider how far the plan proposed by him for this purpose is
susceptible of practical realization ; but it may at least be confidently stated
that the scientific basis on which his proposal rests is no strange novelty
invented by him, but simply a principle as fundamental and widely recog
nized as any within the range of the science of which it forms a part.
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 premiss into the argument. The
new premiss introduced in this case was the influence of custom as modify
ing 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 con
clusion 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 ". The real regulator of actual rent over the