182 History of Local Rates 
many who have home farms often, unintentionally, do 
so wipe out part or even the whole of the rent, and it 
is clear that a sufficient amount of over-cultivation 
would wipe out the rent of any land, however pro- 
ductive. ~~ Ordinarily such over-cultivation is pre- 
vented simply by the fact that owners have control 
and wish to draw income. If they work ‘their own 
land, they do not employ more than that number of 
persons which will yield them the largest surplus: if 
they let the land, their farmer’s interest leads him to 
do the same. Now if perverse institutions, or a wholly 
abnormal burst of altruistic sentiment, led to the over- 
cultivation of the more valuable land and the conse- 
quent abandonment of the rest, rent would disappear. 
The workers would not get it, because competition 
would attract to the most valuable land just that 
number which would suffice to reduce the advantage 
of working on that land to an equality with that of 
working on other land, the reason being that the 
general return to industry would have been reduced 
by the new and uneconomical distribution of labour. 
At present labour produces the income of the workers 
and the rent over and above: under the over-cultiva- 
tion system it would produce no greater income for the 
workers, and the rent surplus would have disappeared. 
This cannot be regarded as a good result, whatever views 
the reader may hold about the proper destination of rent. 
But it is just to this result that the attempt of each 
locality to benefit its own particular inhabitants, 
regardless of its own interest as now conceived and 
defined above, would tend to lead. The raising of 
funds for benefiting the inhabitants without regard to 
the “interest of the locality’ means raising them in