date

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

Maximum

Conclusion

1

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
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  • 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 Dec.r 1801 Maximum 2]
    Description: 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.
  • Title: [14 Dec.r 1801 Maximum Conclusion]
    Description: 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