remunerated by the produce as any portion of the labor and capital already employed. It would sometimes be much more amply remunerated. This could not be, if capital always sought and found the most advantageous employment.
§ 2. Antagonist Principle to the Law of Diminishing Return; the Progress of Improvements in Production.
That the produce of land increases, cæteris paribus, in a diminishing ratio to the increase in the labor employed, is, as we have said (allowing for occasional and temporary exceptions), the universal law of agricultural industry. This principle, however, has been denied. So much so, indeed, that (it is affirmed) the worst land now in cultivation produces as much food per acre, and even as much to a given amount of labor, as our ancestors contrived to extract from the richest soils in England.
This, however, does not prove that the law of which we have been speaking does not exist, but only that there is some antagonizing principle at work, capable for a