Note 156-4 — Chapter II

As to the history of rents in England, a comparison of the years from 1480 to 1484, with the most recent times, shows that the amount of rent estimated in money in agricultural districts, where no very great "improvements" have been made, have increased as 1 to 80-100, while the price of wheat has increased 12-fold and wages 10-fold. (Rogers, in the Statist. Journal, 1864, 77.) According to Hume, History of England, ch. 33, it seems that rents under Henry VIII. were only 1/10 of those usually paid in his time, while the price of commodities was only ¼ of the modern. Davenant, Works, II, 217, 221, estimates the aggregate rent of land, houses and mines, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, at £6,000,000; about 1698, at £14,000,000; capitalized respectively at £72,000,000 and £252,000,000. About 1714, J. Bellers, Proposals for Employing the Poor, puts it at £15,000,000; about 1726, Erasm. Phillips, State of the Nation in Respect to Commerce etc., at £20,000,000; about 1771, A. Young, at £16,000,000; about 1800, Beeke, Observations on the Income-Tax, at £20,000,000; about 1804, Wakefield, Essay on Political Economy, at £28,000,000; about 1838, McCulloch, Statist., I, 535, at £29,500,000. The poor tax in England and Wales, in 1841, was on a valuation of £32,655,000. (Porter, Progress, VI, 2, 614); 1864-5, the annual value of lands, £46,403,853 (Stat. Journal, 1869.) Moreover, the income from houses, railroads, etc. (real property other than lands), increased very much more than that received from pieces of farming land; between 1845 and 1864-5, the former by 392.8 per cent., and the latter by 27.9 per cent. (Hildebrand's Jahrbb., 1869, II, 383 seq.); and the income tax of 1857 on £47,109,000. There was a still more rapid growth of rent in Scotland. In 1770, it was only £1,000,000-1,200,000: in 1795, £2,000,000; in 1842, £5,586,000. (McCulloch, I, 576, ff.) In Ireland, about 1776, it was only $900,000, according to Petty. (Political Anatomy of Ireland, I, 113.) A. Young assumed it to be £6,000,000 in 1778; Newenham, View of Ireland, about 1808, £15,000,000. In many parts of the Rosendale Forest in Lancashire, the land is leased by the ell, at £121, and even at £131 per acre; i. e., more than the whole forest of 15,300 acres was rented for in the time of James I. In many of the moorland portions of Lancashire, rent has risen in 150 years, 1,500 and even 3,000 per cent. (Edinburg Rev., 1843, Febr., 223.)

The amount of rents in Prussia, Krug assumed to be in 1804, 50,000,000 thalers, and von Viebahn, Zollverein Statistik, II, 974, in 1862, 116,500,000 thalers. Lavergne assumed the rents of France after 1850 to be 1,600,000,000 francs (Revue des deux Mondes, Mars, 1868); and Dutot, Journal des Economistes, Juin, 1870, in 1870, at 2,000,000,000. In Norway, the capitalized value of all the land was assessed at 13,000,000,000 thalers in specie, in 1665; in 1802, at 25,500,000; in 1839, at 64,000,000 thalers. Blom, Statistik von Norwegen, I, 145. The older such estimates are, the more unreliable they are.