Note 328 — Chapter III · : THE PESSIMISTS

Some critics, e.g. Fontenay, Bastiat’s disciple, suggested that land No. 4 might very well become No. 1, if, instead of being employed in the cultivation of corn, an intelligent husbandman were to put it to viticulture or rose-growing. But this is to beg the question. The law of rent implies products of the same kind, for it is this identity of quality that enables them to be sold at the same price. If bad corn-land could become good rose-growing ground, then of course it would take its place among rose-growing areas, yielding rent as soon as less fertile lands were employed for the same purpose.