date

8 Decr 1801 Maximum 6
8 Decr 1801

Maximum

6

7

One case may have been mentioned, as capable of being cited though not cited by the Hon. Gentleman, as lending countenance to the supposition of /that/ a maximum may be inferior to all inferior prices. This is the case of the Assize of Bread of the price of bread as fixed by the Law in certain places according to the standard pitched upon for that purpose. But in this case the price is always so low, that there is no field left in which competition can find room to exercise itself. It is made purposely as near as may be to the lowest rate of profit which is capable or supposed of finding acceptance. If in any instance it is /be/ not absolutely at the mark of the very lowest price that would be accepted of, it is at any rate /even then/ so near the mark, that the difference - in that sort of general view which the eye of the public is in the habit of bestowing - would not be perceptible. Three or four per Cent perhaps or some such matter: - but what is such a scale of variation in comparison of the /an/ interval of cent per cent: an interval which in the case of bread corn might well be left between the maximum /greatest allowed/ price and the living -profit price, and yet afford a prodigious relief when compared with the mark to which the actual prices have risen /so lately been seen to rise/ within so recent an experience.
Similar Items
  • Title: [14 Decr 1801 Maximum 1 Bread]
    Description: 14 Decr 1801

    Maximum

    1 Bread

    1

    The /My/ aim in these pages being – not the gaining of a point – but the

    disentanglement of useful truth on which side soever it may be to be found,

    arguments that appear inconclusive must, on whatever side they present

    themselves, be equally as such held up to view.

    Cases of various kinds have been referred to /pointed out/, as precedents of a

    maximum law: they are so of a maximum taken at large of a fixation of prices

    taken at large: but they do not any of them appear to be in point or to come up

    to the case when applied to the case of corn.

    The nearest case upon /to/ a superficial view, is that of the assize of bread:

    and to a superficial view, it is indeed a very near one: the subject matter

    being the same article /individual parcel of matter/ only in different states.

    But in point of principle the analogy is altogether wanting. Of The fixation

    proposed for the price of the corn the effect would be to prevent it from rising

    beyond /above/ a certain mark above the mark so fixed upon for that purpose. The

    sort of fixation in use in regard to bread leaves the price free in effect to

    rise to any heighth. What it determines is – not the absolute price of bread but

    only its proportion to another price the price
  • Title: [12 Decr 1801 Maximum Beginning]
    Description: 12 Decr 1801

    Maximum

    Beginning

    4

    The effect of a combination is rather to fix prices, than to urge them on at an

    indefinitely encreasing rate. In the case of a combination, it is but natural

    that they should be /the rate /mark/ at which they are/ fixed by it, /should be/

    at too high a rate /mark/: but at that too high rate /mark at any rate/ they are

    fixed. It is by competition the very reverse of combination that prices are

    spurred up to a continually encreasing height. While the price is as yet no

    higher than a double price, dealers crowd in upon a farmer to buy it at that

    double price cash apprehending that if he does not now submitt to get it at so

    high a price, he will he knows not how soon not be able to get it at less than a

    treble price. The farmer observing this eagerness, and inferring /looking to/ a

    general and proportionally encreasing scarcity as the cause of it, rises

    accordingly in his demand. Why should he not? if he foregoes his share in the

    profit, he will but throw it entire into the hands of his {more prudent and

    determined} neighbours. If combination were /had been/ the cause, there must

    have been an uninterrupted chain of prices successively fixed by it, with a

    convention of farmers or corndealers or farmers and corndealers continually

    sitting and setting illegal assizes of corn with as much regularity as the legal

    assizes are set in the case of

    bread.
  • Title: [8 Decr 1801 Maximum 8. Local]
    Description: 8 Decr 1801

    Maximum

    8. Local Variation

    3

    would not be sufficiently correct to do as much good as the fixation of the price

    of bread may for anything that will be shewn to the contrary have done, is

    evident enough. - but because it is out of our power to do all the good we wish

    and have in view, is that a reason for doing none?