date

12 Decr 1801 Maximum Beginning
12 Decr 1801

Maximum

Beginning

3

I do not believe in the existence of combination in any instance. I do not mean /not/ that were evidence to present itself, I should be at all disinclined to believe /listen to/ it: but as from the nature of the case it is that sort of fact which I should not expect to see exist, it is of course that sort of fact which I should not expect to see made out by evidence.

The very enormity of the heighth to which we have seen the prices rise is to /in/ my view of the matter an argument against the improbability of any such combination. On the supposition of a combination, I find it difficult to conceive how it should have ever fallen so much even to the too high mark to which we have seen it fall, or how it should ever have risen so high as we have seen it rise. {Remorse, fear of popular censure and legal punishment out of the question, personal prudence must I think have been sufficient to prevent any individual farmer or dealer from proposing at the beginning of the season any such price as the £8 or £9 a quarter we have seen it rise to. Consistently with personal prudence a man could not at the commencement of the scarcity – when wheat was at 50s or 60s a quarter enter into /build upon/ engagements calculated upon any such price as 170 or 180.}

[marginal note:] Distinguish between the Farmer & the Dealer
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  • Title: [12 Decr 1801 Maximum Beginning]
    Description: 12 Decr 1801

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    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: [12 Decr 1801 Maximum Beginning]
    Description: 12 Decr 1801

    Maximum

    Beginning

    5

    bread. The supposition of a combination among farmers is a supposition altogether

    unnecessary to the accounting for the effect, when without any such combination,

    a competition among the Dealers is a cause adequate to the production of the

    effect in an equal, or any superior degree. When in the case of the South Sea

    Scheme an annuity that had been sold at £100 rose in the course of a few months

    at £1000, the cause of it was not by a combination among those who actually /the

    actual possessors of/ the property, but a competition among those who being

    confident that how high a price soever they should give for it, they should

    always be able to sell it at a still higher, were continually anxious to possess

    more and more of it. When in Holland at the time of the rage of /for/ tulips

    /Tulip Rage/ a flower of that kind that would /might/ before that time have been

    had for a shilling or two found purchasers at 5 or 10 guineas, it was still not

    any combination amongst the growers of these superfluous ornaments /beautifull

    trifles/ /rarities/, but the competition, the adventurous wager-laying

    competition among the purchasers that was the known and real cause.
  • 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