date

14 Dec.r 1801 Maximum 2
14 Dec.r 1801

Maximum

2

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.
Similar Items
  • Title: [14 Dec.r 1801 Maximum 1]
    Description: 14 Dec.r 1801

    Maximum

    1

    In speaking of a maximum as a measure that might eventually become an eligible

    one, I must beg not to be understood as proposing a system of compulsion,

    obliging growers or vendors of corn to send it in to market either all at once

    or according to any system /plan/ of regulation in respect of numbers,

    quantities times and places.
  • Title: [14 Dec.r 1801 Maximum Conclusion]
    Description: 14 Dec.r 1801

    Maximum

    Conclusion

    1

    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: [14 Decr 1801 Maximum 2]
    Description: 14 Decr 1801

    Maximum

    2

    for this admission, I am more than half inclined to demand another – {viz: that

    with an ordinary measure of attention – with that measure of attention which no

    reasonable and candid observer can expect to find wanting either on the part

    either of Administration or of Parliament,} it would in such a case be little,

    if at all, less easy to avoid making one.

    Look at the name only and no deeper famine stares you in the face: look a hairs

    breadth deeper – the danger vanishes.

    As for example suppose the price reduced by a maximum to whatever mark it is

    proposed to redeem it by importation – where in that case is the famine?

    Importation, it is true, encreases quantity, and in that way lowers price,

    whereas a maximum would if successful[?] reduce price without encrease of

    quantity. True: but on the other hand encrease of price it is equally well known

    is out of all proportion to deficiency of quantity: - but of this a little

    further on.