date

14 Decr 1801 Maximum 2
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.
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  • Title: [14 Decr 1801 Maximum 1]
    Description: 14 Decr 1801

    Maximum

    1

    Should any one here observe, that a maximum is a sort of measure of which famine

    might be the result, I admitt the truth of the observation without the smallest

    difficulty /hesitation/. A government which with this instrument in its hand

    should produce /propose/ to itself to produce a famine /give birth to that

    calamity/ might go to work with the most perfect assurance of success. A

    Physician, who should propose to himself to poison his patients, might be

    equally well assured /afford him an equal assurance/ of success, by means of

    Opium or Antimony. To The College of Physicians this property thus indisputably

    belonging to these two useful drugs has never been a secret or matter of

    dispute: yet opium and antimony maintain an undisputed place in the list of

    useful medicines. Physicians, knowing that life and death depend upon number

    weight and measure, are in the habit of bestowing upon those objects the

    attention they deserve. If those who amuse themselves /the body politic/ with

    speculating or operating upon the body politic, were as strict and as uniform in

    their attention to those essential objects as those whose labours are employd

    upon the natural body natural, there would be a little better logic and a little

    less rhetoric would be heard and read, both within doors and without.

    I admitt then that by means of a maximum, it is perfectly easy to make a famine:

    but, in return

    for
  • Title: [21 Decr 1801 Maximum Mode]
    Description: 21 Decr 1801

    Maximum

    Mode

    Execution

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    a way in which, /in point of/ consistently with the rules of justice and

    expediency, (two rules which when putably[?] understood can never disagree) a

    man can not /ought not to/ be made a sufferer by the dispensations of the

    legislature. The public would indeed in this case have the benefit of his corn:

    but it would be only for one crop – and even then it would amount to no more

    than the difference between a crop of corn and a crop of something else: and for

    this hairs breadth difference, it will see a shock given to that security which

    so many other crops look to as their source.
  • Title: [14 Dec.r 1801 Maximum 2]
    Description: 14 Dec.r 1801

    Maximum

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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.