date

14 Dec.r 1801 Maximum Conclusion
14 Dec.r 1801

Maximum

Conclusion

3 /1/

If it requires much fortitude and public spirit to give a legal sanction /stand

forth as the adopter/ to such a measure, it required some share, how inferior

soever a share I will venture to say to have stood forth in the way in which I

have ventured to do to be the proposer of it. In doing so, I am but too well

persuaded of experiencing nothing but disapprobation from the persons of whose

judgement stands highest even in my own estimate: in a case like this, converts

in any considerable proportion would not reasonably be expected, even by the

help of arguments of a more convincing nature than what in my view of it, it

affords. On the part of those who on the same question are on the same side, the

prospect is still more discouraging: if I prove /make good/ their point, it is

after the rejection of all their reasons. If on a single point, I /the arguments

I have brought to view/ confirm their judgment it is not till after having

thwarted and wounded their affections[?]. Hot tempers joined to weak and

imperfectly furnished understandings have ever hitherto been the characteristics

of the bulk of readers: in the present /is an/ instance the ground of

conciliation is narrow – that matter of irritation wide irritative matter

copious. Candour and impartiality in any station other than that of a Judge /an

official/ are not to the taste of the generality of readers. They find no such

sentiment:

they
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    prevail on it to get the better of that propensity, and look out for /betake

    itself to/ a higher level, and this may serve as an argument in favour /support/

    of maximum to any gentleman who finds himself disposed /feels in himself a

    propensity/ to consider it as such.

    [marginal note:] I choose rather to remain unread than feed readers with such

    arguments.
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    Even Supposing, if I may be allowed so to do for argument’s sake the utility and

    success as well as the adoption of the measure, it will require no small degree

    of the purest and rarest sort of public spirit as well as firmness /fortitude/

    on the part of government /administrators/ to embrace it /to propose it/. I know

    /can think/ of no state of things in which any very general approbation could

    reasonably be expected for it. If after the establishment of the maximum price

    the actual price should continue every where below it, the law could then be

    said, with or without reason, to be without effect: if the actual price should

    have risen every where or any where to the maximum price, the encrease of price

    might, and by many naturally would be attributed not to the scarcity, but to the

    law: in the first case, your law is inefficacious /useless/ - it would be said –

    in the other, mischievous. In the first case, does it absolutely follow from the

    mere state of the case that the law will have been useless – that it can not

    have contributed any thing to the keeping down of the price? The answer is more

    than I could undertake to give with confidence. I see no absurdity in the

    supposition, that the acknowledged /recognized/ impossibility of seeing the

    actual
  • Title: [14 Dec.r 1801 Maximum 1]
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    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.