Now, in connection with many questions of a more or less limited kind,
this assimilation of the products of superior ability to rent, and of
ability of a lower grade to land which is practically rentless, will
serve our purpose well enough. Between the two cases, however, there is
a vast and underlying difference; and when we consider our present
problem under its widest and most vital aspect, it is the difference,
not the likeness, between them, which constitutes our main concern. The
nature of this difference has been pointed out already. When we are
discussing rent and agriculture, land is a necessary assumption, for
unless there were land, there could be no agriculture at all; but there
can be, has been, and still is in the world, abundance of labour without
directive ability; and while it would be meaningless to ask what would
happen to rent if all land disappeared, the question of what would
happen to labour if all ability were in abeyance is precisely the
question raised by all schemes of economic revolution, and one which has
been constantly illustrated by the facts of economic history.
Of such facts we may take the following, picturesque example: In the
eighteenth century the Jesuit Fathers in Uruguay succeeded in teaching
the natives a variety of Western arts, among others that of
watch-making, and so long as the Jesuits were on the spot to direct them
the natives exhibited much manual skill.
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