ABSTRACT
The productive faculty of capital is often so interwoven with that of natural agents, that it is difficult, or perhaps impossible, to assign, with accuracy, their respective shares in the business of production. In the employment of machinery, which wonderfully augments the productive power of man, the product obtained is due partly to the value of the capital vested in the machine, arid partly to the agency of natural powers. Natural agents, like land, which are susceptible of appropriation, would not produce nearly so much, were not the proprietors certain of exclusively gathering their produce, and able to vest in them, with full confidence, the capital which so much enlarges their productiveness. The world at large may be content to comprehend, without taking the trouble of measuring, their respective shares in the production of wealth. Amongst other dangerous consequences of the system of the economists, is the notable one of substituting a land-tax in lieu of all other taxation.
