RENT

195

was  regrettable  ;  but  inevitable  because
it  was  discovered  that  the  law  determining
the  annual  value  of  buildings,  fences,  gates,
and  artificial  drainage  systems,  was  no
different  fundamentally  from  the  law  determining ­
  the  prices  of  other  things  freely
produced.  It  scarcely  need  be  remarked—
but  perhaps  attention  should  be  called  to  the
point  incidentally—that  every  value  can
theoretically  be  expressed  as  a  total  in  a
price,  or  as  an  income  in  terms  of  periodic
payments.  A  price  can  easily  be  transformed
into  an  annual  payment  and  an  annual
payment  into  a  purchase  price.  The  only
matter  to  settle  is  the  number  of  years’
purchase  which  should  be  allowed  in  effecting
the  transformation  ;  and  the  number  of  years’
purchase  is  deducible  from  the  durability  of
the  thing  in  question  and  the  ruling  rate  of
interest.  In  order  to  distinguish  rent  in  the
restricted  economic  sense  just  described  from
rent  in  the  ordinary  sense,  the  former  was
occasionally  spoken  of  as  “  economic  rent  ”
or  “  rent  of  land.”
The  violence  done  to  the  implication  of
“  rent  ”  did  not  stop  with  the  rejection  of
all  payments  for  the  improvement  of  land.
Recent  years  have  seen  also  an  extension  of
the  term’s  denotation  to  make  it  include