date

14 Dec.r 1801 Maximum Conclusion
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.
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  • Title: [14 Dec.r 1801 Maximum Conclusion]
    Description: 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
  • 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: [8 Decr 1801 Maximum 6]
    Description: 8 Decr 1801

    Maximum

    6

    7

    One case may have been mentioned, as capable of being cited though not cited by the Hon. Gentleman, as lending countenance to the supposition of /that/ a maximum may be inferior to all inferior prices. This is the case of the Assize of Bread of the price of bread as fixed by the Law in certain places according to the standard pitched upon for that purpose. But in this case the price is always so low, that there is no field left in which competition can find room to exercise itself. It is made purposely as near as may be to the lowest rate of profit which is capable or supposed of finding acceptance. If in any instance it is /be/ not absolutely at the mark of the very lowest price that would be accepted of, it is at any rate /even then/ so near the mark, that the difference - in that sort of general view which the eye of the public is in the habit of bestowing - would not be perceptible. Three or four per Cent perhaps or some such matter: - but what is such a scale of variation in comparison of the /an/ interval of cent per cent: an interval which in the case of bread corn might well be left between the maximum /greatest allowed/ price and the living -profit price, and yet afford a prodigious relief when compared with the mark to which the actual prices have risen /so lately been seen to rise/ within so recent an experience.