[12].Young,Travels,Dublin edition,pp.241-42.Young offered little analysis to support his claims,and one doubts his impartiality when he stated:"The metayers were so miserably poor,it was impossible for them to cultivate well.I started some observations on the modes which ought to be pursued;but all conversation of that sort is time lost in France"（Maxwell edition,pp.202-3）.
[13].Young,Travels,Betham-Edwards edition.
[14].Ibid.,p.18.
[15].Young,Travels,Maxwell edition,pp.361-404.
[16].When Betham-Edwards wrote in her introduction to Young's Travels（p.vi）,that"nothing has done more[than metayage]to improve the condition of the peasant and of husbandry within the last fifty years,"she was not speaking of French agriculture at Young's time.Thus,Maxwell's editing method appears more appropriate.Maxwell's opinion on metayage is worth noting:
It was not perhaps so much a cause of poverty however as a result,and that it was a system that worked rather better in practice than in theory is shown by the fact that it survived the Revolution,and is still a recognized form of land-holding……Even before the Revolution there were many French landlords who lived on excellent terms with their metayers,visiting them in their holdings and discussing agricultural matters with them（Maxwell edition,p.xxx）.
[17].See Young,Travels,Dublin edition,p.239.
[18].Young's account of taxes is best seen in a chapter on the Revolution（Travels,Maxwell edition,pp.327-60）.On p.xxvi,Maxwell noted:"According to recent estimates 36 per cent of the peasant's income disappeared in direct taxes to the State;14 per cent went on tithes payable to the Church;while 11 or 12 per cent was consumed by seigneurial dues at Young's time."
[19].See ibid.,pp.296-97.
[20].Richard Jones,An Essay on the Distribution of Wealth and on the Sources of Taxation,part 1—Rent（London:John Murrary,1831）.To my knowledge,no Part 2 was ever issued.That Jones shared Smith's view of landlease development is evident throughout the entire volume,and esp.on pp.73-75.
[21].Ibid.,p.91.
[22].Ibid.,pp.98-99.
[23].Ibid.,p.102.
[24].J.C.L.Simonde de Sismondi,Political Economy[1815]（New York:Augustus M.Kelley,1966）,pp.41-42.
[25].See John Stuart Mill,Principles of Political Economy（4th ed.；London:John W.Parker and Son,1857）,Book 2,chap.8,"Of Metayers."
[26].Ibid.,p.367.J.R.McCulloch was another noted"English authority"who wrote:
The practice of letting lands by proportional rents……is very general on the continent;and wherever it has been adopted,it has put a stop to all improvements,and has reduced the cultivators to the most abject poverty[Principles of Political Economy（Edinburgh,1843）,p.471].
[27].Mill,Principles of Political Economy,p.380.
[28].Ibid.,pp.366-67.
[29].Ibid.,p.367.
[30].Ibid.,pp.365-66.
[31].Note that the last statement in this quotation is quite different from Jones's view.
[32].See Mill,Principles of Political Economy,p.363 and the second footnote on p.364.
[33].Ibid.,p.363.
[34].Ibid.,p.364.
[35].Mill quotes Sismondi in ibid.,pp.363-64.
[36].This is drawn from my impression of their discussion of distribution.See,for example,Jones,Distribution of Wealth;Sismondi,Political Economy,chap.3；McCulloch,Principles of Political Economy,pt.3；and Mill,Principles of Political Economy,bk.2.
[37].Mill,Principles of Political Economy,pp.380-81.
B.The Neoclassical View
Several analytical deficiencies stood in the way of classical writers in arriving at a general solution for resource use under share tenancy.Other than their conceptual ambiguities mentioned earlier,classical writers failed to treat land rent as part of production cost.[1] Furthermore,the marginal analysis required to reach an equilibrium was vague.These shortcomings did not handicap Alfred Marshall when he analyzed sharecropping.But whereas,before Marshall,Sismondi and Mill had not placed much weight on the tax-equivalent argument,Marshall renewed the thesis,presumably because the analogy to a tax under share rent fits rather neatly into his marginal analysis.[2] Even with such an approach,Marshall almost obtained the correct solution in a footnote.
By tracing footnotes in two chapters of Marshall's Principles,40 one derives a diagram used by several subsequent economists.With fuller exposition,this is presented in figure 4.For simplicity,let us assume that the only tenant input is labor.In figure 4,tenant labor,t,is measured along the horizontal axis,and
represents the marginal product of tenant labor with a given plot of land.The marginal tenant cost,
,is horizontal in a competitive market,with W as the prevailing wage rate.If the landowner is to hire farm hands to do the tilling,equilibrium is at B,and the quantity of farm labor hired will be t2.At this equilibrium,we have the marginal equality:
=
.The same result obtains for owner cultivation,whether the owner works up to t 2 and works elsewhere,or whether he works to less than t2and hires additional laborers at W.The total rent as a return to land received by the landowner is represented by the area MDB,an amount equal to that of a fixed-rent contract.
Under the tax approach of analyzing share tenancy,however,the marginal tenant receipt net of rent,
（1-r）,will shift downward at every point.That is,if the landowner takes [3] percent of the annual yield（r=0.4）and the tenant takes 60 percent,
（1-r）will be 60 percent of
at every point.With the tenant's decision made at the margin,it is said,equilibrium is at A,where the marginal tenant cost equals the marginal tenant receipt;that is,
=
（1-r）.The associated quantity of tenant labor will be t1.Under this condition,the total product is represented by the area ODJt1,with the landowner getting a rent equal to area EDJA and the tenant's share equaling OEAt1.As shown,area MEA represents the amount received by the ten-ant over and above his alternative earning（area OMAt1）.With equilibrium at A,the marginal product of tenant labor is higher than the marginal tenant cost.Share tenancy is therefore inefficient（with area JAB representing the economic waste）.
It was with this analysis in mind that Marshall commented:
