Thorstein Veblen Review author to: 'History of the English Landed Interest. (Modern Period).' By RUSSEL M. GARNIER. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co. New York: Macmillan & Co., 1893. 8vo. pp. xx + 564. The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 2, No. 3. (Jun., 1894), pp. 475-477. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [475] In this volume the narrative of the English Landed Interest, begun in the author's earlier volume (on the Early Period), is continued down to the repeal of the Corn Laws. As the title indicates, the subject treated of is the Landed Interest, rather than the Agriculture or the rural community generally, but the discourse covers, particularly by means of digressions, some topics that are not fairly to be included either under the general title or under the cognate heads of "Customs, Laws, and Agriculture." Such a digression is the chapter on "The Political Economists and the Land," which seems intended to enforce upon the minds of the English landowner and farmer of today certain elementary propositions of economics rather than to fill out, or even to embellish, the narrative. Similar digressions in other parts of the volume, as, e.g., the account of early speculations in chemical theory contained in the chapter on "The Progress of Scientific Agriculture" serve to being before the reader many entertaining, but completely irrelevant anecdotes, and, incidentally, to show the author's familiarity with a wide range of curious and obscure facts bearing very remotely, if at all, on the subject in hand. The author's standpoint is that of the English landowner, and, in reading what he has to say, it is difficult to always avoid the impression that one is listening to an advocate's argument. The intention [476] to be impartial and dispassionate is evident throughout, but the point of view asserts itself pretty obviously from time to time, - notoriously so in the chapter on "Cobbett and Mill," where derogatory epithets are altogether too freely used. Cobbett is referred to as "this demagogue," and it is vouchsafed that "the best policy for the rulers of a community which contained individuals so indiscriminate in their abuse as this man, was to leave them severely alone. All Cobbett required was a sufficient quantity of rope, and presently he might have hung himself" (p. 479). This borders too closely on abuse. A deprecatory tone runs through the discussion of Mill's activity, also, but, while leaving no doubt that Mill is to be looked upon as an enemy of the Landed Interest, the author keeps his indignation well in hand. In his reference (p. 517) to Mill's distinction between rent and profits as terms applicable to income derived from capital sunk in the soil, Mr. Garnier has failed to apprehend Mill's meaning. Mr. Garnier here makes use of the distinction between rent and profits in an attempted refutation of Mill's doctrine of the unearned increment, while it is beyond question that the latter did not regard income from capital sunk in the soil as rent for the purposes of the doctrine of an unearned increment; Mr. Garnier's appeal to the passage in Mill, however, plainly implies that he has so understand him, and he even goes about to expose the error imputed to Mill. This discussion of the claim of the community to the unearned increment seems to proceed, in part, on a confusion of the present capitalized value of permanent improvements (which alone has any bearing on the question) with the aggregate of expenditures actually made in the past in effecting the improvements (which is beside the point). Opponents of Mill's view of the unearned increment will be edified to find that Mr. Garnier has been reduced to the extremity of appealing to the Duke of Argyll as an authority in support of the doctrine that the landlord's rent is altogether of the nature of profits on the capital invested. It is perhaps to be regretted that Mr. Garnier has thought it necessary for the sake of completeness to give considerable space to other than agricultural or agrarian questions. The English landed gentry own the deposits of coal and other minerals, and it is therefore conceived that a volume on the "Landed Interest" must deal in some detail with the relation of the gentry to these mineral deposits and their exploitation, and even to give something of a discursive account of the development of coal mining (pp. 16-36) Likewise characteristic [477] of the author's point of view is the chapter on "The Story of the National Woodlands." Mr. Garnier's book is a popular and interesting narrative, at the same time that it is of some considerable value to the student of English agrarian conditions. T. B. V.