"Whenever, then, the usual and ordinary rate of the profits of agricultural stock, and all the outgoings belonging to the cultivation of land, are together equal to the value of the whole produce, there can be no rent"
About this Quote
The intent is technical, but the subtext is political. Ricardo is quietly undermining the moral claim that landlords deserve income because land “produces” it. Land, in his telling, doesn’t generate rent by working harder; rent emerges when conditions (better soil, better location, rising food prices, population pressure) allow production to exceed the cost of production at the margin. That’s why he’s obsessed with “the usual rate of profits”: rent rises not because landlords improve anything, but because the economic frontier moves onto worse land, pushing up prices and creating a surplus on better plots.
Context matters: early 19th-century Britain is industrializing, food prices are volatile, and the Corn Laws protect landowners by keeping grain prices high. Ricardo’s model reads like a clean equation, but it’s also a scalpel aimed at aristocratic income. By defining rent as what remains after society pays for work and capital, he turns the landlord from creator to claimant - and makes redistribution sound like arithmetic rather than rebellion.
Quote Details
| Topic | Money |
|---|---|
| Source | David Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817), Chapter II "On Rent" — standard edition/transcription of Ricardo's definition of rent. |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Ricardo, David. (n.d.). Whenever, then, the usual and ordinary rate of the profits of agricultural stock, and all the outgoings belonging to the cultivation of land, are together equal to the value of the whole produce, there can be no rent. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/whenever-then-the-usual-and-ordinary-rate-of-the-141358/
Chicago Style
Ricardo, David. "Whenever, then, the usual and ordinary rate of the profits of agricultural stock, and all the outgoings belonging to the cultivation of land, are together equal to the value of the whole produce, there can be no rent." FixQuotes. Accessed February 3, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/whenever-then-the-usual-and-ordinary-rate-of-the-141358/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Whenever, then, the usual and ordinary rate of the profits of agricultural stock, and all the outgoings belonging to the cultivation of land, are together equal to the value of the whole produce, there can be no rent." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/whenever-then-the-usual-and-ordinary-rate-of-the-141358/. Accessed 3 Feb. 2026.
