date

13 Dec.r 1801 Maximum 1
13 Dec.r 1801

Maximum

1

The example of France has been referred to as an experimental proof of the

ineligibility /inexpediency/ of a maximum law. The reference to be applicable to

the purpose must go to this, that the example proves the inexpediency of such a

law according to any the most advantageous form that could in the country be

given to it. But to this purpose the example will be found inapplicable

altogether. To those who are unable /want either ability or inclination/ to look

beyond a name the argument may be a sufficient one: but to any one who will take

the trouble of seeing what was really done in France by government on the

occasion referred to by that name /word/ the resemblance will be found wanting

altogether. In France, the price was set at random and set abundantly too low:

it was accompanied with an obligation – an universal pell-mell observation – to

carry the corn to market to be sold at that inadequate price: and the price

which would have been inadequate had it even been real was after all but

nominal, payment being to be taken in worthless paper. This account of the

matter is taken from the /an/ interesting narrative, purporting to be that of a

Lady, who was witness to the scene. The propositions it does prove are abundant

– that people ought neither to be plundered nor put to death nor plundered

without
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  • Title: [14 Dec.r 1801 Maximum Conclusion]
    Description: 14 Dec.r 1801

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    actual price rise to any pitch above that of the statutable price, should have

    checked /nipped/ the rage of unlimited and speculative competition in the bud:

    and by that means confined the encrease of price within limits less wide than

    they would have been otherwise of the mark exactly correspondent to the amount

    of the deficiency.
  • Title: [13 Dec.r 1801 Maximum 2]
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    without trial – that farmers ought not to be forced to send in their corn to

    market – especially not all of them the same day and every day: that people

    ought not to be forced to take a gram or two of stamped paper for an ounce or

    two of gold or silver: with a multitude of other propositions as incontestable

    as these. But what has all this to do with such a maximum law as any one would

    propose for Britain.
  • Title: [14 Dec.r 1801 Maximum 2]
    Description: 14 Dec.r 1801

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    Compulsion being out of the question, what assurance it may be asked can you have

    that your price when settled /thus fixed/ will be accepted of {by the parties

    interested}?, and /but/, if not accepted of, then comes famine. I answer – the

    same assurance that exists in all other cases /instances/: and that in all other

    cases, is proved to be well-grounded by experience: the abundance of /natural

    sufficiency of/ the inducements for brining the article to market: the absence

    of all inducements for keeping it back, I should /might/ have said a much

    stronger assurance. The {measure of} profit still obtainable will not be a

    profit merely equal to the greatest usually obtainable in other trades – or at

    other times in this trade – but much greater: the inducement which without the

    maximum prompts men to keep back the article, would by the maximum be taken

    away: without the maximum, experience holds out almost a quadruple price as

    obtainable, presumption might hold out a greater and indefinite one: the maximum

    admitting of no more than a double price little more or less putting /puts/ an

    end to all such expectations, leaving /and leaves/ the allowed price as the only

    obtainable as well as abundantly sufficient price.