Wakefield and Classical Rent Theory

Abstract

continues to hold the interest of scholars.1 One lacuna in the study of classical theory concerns the development of classical rent theory which evolved from the emigration-colonization remedy that was advocated for abating the economic ills of the Britain of the classical era.2 The concern of this paper is with the specific aspect of this classical discussion of emigration and colonization which concerned the theory, and the taxation of economic rent as the classical theory was applied to colonial conditions. For here classical thought underwent a change in emphasis, a transformation often missed by contemporaries who claimed that a substantive aspect of Ricardian theory was at issue.3 This change in emphasis is clearly brought out in Edward Gibbon Wakefield's plan of Systematic Colonization and is forcefully reflected in J. S. Mill's great restatement of Ricardian economics some years later. Thus Mill wrote: