date

8 Decr 1801 Maximum 8. Local
8 Decr 1801

Maximum

8. Local Variation

2

That the allowed price of bread corn could not be adjusted to the living-profit price of breadcorn in every place of the kingdom with as much correctness as in the metropolis the allowed price of bread is to the market price of breadcorn, is an proposition, the truth of which I {am as well satisfied as he can be /see no reason for disputing/.} Whether it would be worth while to attempt to make any difference at all between place and place, between the place /places/ which gives /give/ /average/ upon an average the highest price is a point /question on/ is more than at present, if ever, I should /can/ regard myself as competent to pronounce. But the question is not whether a fixation of this sort could be performed with the utmost degree of correctness that could be wished, but whether it could be performed at all. The Hon:ble Gentleman’s answer is most decidedly, and without {restriction or} limitation or condition in the negative: if therefore any one maximum /fixed/ price be pointed out, that shall at the same time be less /lower/ than the greatest /highest/ free price known and shall at the same time stand clear of the Hon Gentleman’s arguments, the whole apparatus of them falls to the ground. I will venture for illustrations sake to name a price in this view: and let it be the exact[?] double of the highest ordinary /average free/ price at the place at which that price is highest. That a price thus high

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

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    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?
  • Title: [8 Decr 1801 Maximum 6]
    Description: 8 Decr 1801

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    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.
  • Title: [14 Decr 1801 Maximum 1 Bread]
    Description: 14 Decr 1801

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    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