date

18 Decr 1801 Maximum Ulteriora
18 Decr 1801

Maximum

Ulteriora

2

The dearness has for its ulterior cause exuberance – habitual and indefensibly

increasing exuberance – of money – of money of the primary sort, by the too

rapid importation of the pretious metals its materials: the materials of which

it is composed: of money of the secondary sort, by the unlimited creation of it.

In regard to scarcity two remedies commonly relied on as sufficient are

essentially inadequate: cultivation of waste, and importation, with or without

bounties: in the ordinary course of trade that is /I mean/ by individuals on

their own account, taking their chance in respect to sale and price: two others

commonly shrunk from: but the only ones upon which any safe reliance can be

placed: magazines, in public account, and facility afforded allowance

/allowance/ declaredly and liberally given to exportation of capital and

emigration.

By inadequate in speaking of eaters[?] of waste I certainly do not mean

undesirable: but where is the resource when all shall have been brought into

culture? a state of things which many /some persons/ now living may perhaps live

to see. The period arrival of the period /times/ is an event worth calculation,

but is not a fit place. In the mean time encrease of mouths is going on, as fast

perhaps as the encrease of land in a state to feed them.
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  • Title: [18 Decr 1801 Maximum Ulteriora]
    Description: 18 Decr 1801

    Maximum

    Ulteriora

    {An observation I set out with – an admission if the reader pleases – for an

    observation would otherwise but ill bestowed upon a matter sufficiently obvious

    to every body, that} a maximum law, Defensible as it appears, is but a temporary

    expedient /palliative/ and at best but a palliative in relation to the

    inconveniences under which we have been labouring, and under which, if no remedy

    of a more radical complexion be applied, we seem condemned to labour. /though I

    see nothing which should prevent its being a permanent one in principle subject

    to variation in respect of nominal price./

    To the catalogue of remedies that have been proposed, no new article, I am

    confident, remains to be added: but in regard to the selection of them it

    presents itself to any view as a topic that wants much of being exhausted.

    Pernicious – inoperative – inadequate – indispensable such is the mixture I have

    been accustomed to view /see/ in the same page.+

    The mischief has two roots /causes/ - habitual scarcity and dearness beyond the

    scarcity: both habitual and permanent: roots altogether unconnected, and which

    require carefully to be distinguished with the utmost care.

    The scarcity has for its ulterior cause, prosperity in all its shapes: an

    exuberant population – exuberant not with reference to wealth taken in all its

    shapes – for that too is in exuberance, but with respect to the capacity of

    raising within the local precincts of the chief seat of empire, the quantity of

    food necessary for the sustenance of its inhabitants.

    [+] Write dogmatically, for shortness having prefaced by an apology.
  • Title: [18 Decr 1801 Maximum Ulteriora]
    Description: 18 Decr 1801

    Maximum

    Ulteriora

    3

    Importation as a permanent and constant recourse is another recourse essentially

    inadequate, because it supposed a constant surplus, constantly at our command,

    and adequate to our encreasing wants. The recent inadequateness of it matter of

    experience: it has been grievously expensive, and still inadequate. Relying on

    it, we remain in a state of continual dependence for our daily bread: the state

    whatever it may be, from which we draw the largest portion of our supply, has us

    in its power /at its mercy/. The system pursued till within these | | years the

    system of bounties on exportation, supposed a /an habitual/ deficiency of corn

    in the rest of the commercial world: the system of importation supposes an

    habitual redundance. Both suppositions are random ones: both can not be true at

    the same time: but the risk attendant on the former is as nothing in comparison

    of that attendant on the latter. Quantity for quantity to fail of filling up a

    deficiency is a much worse misfortune than to fail of getting rid of a

    redundance /superfluity/ upon advantageous terms: and the superfluity formerly

    got rid of was but a small part of the deficiency of late endeavoured and in

    vain to be filled up. Measure for this purpose has never yet been taken of the

    commercial world: the world is a large place and corn in abundance grows in it

    further than this calculation has not /scarce/ extended, greater precision than

    this calculations have /has/ never aimed at.
  • Title: [18 Decr 1801 Maximum Ulteriora]
    Description: 18 Decr 1801

    Maximum

    Ulteriora

    In political economy One of the most copious sources of error is a blind and

    sordid greediness: grasping at any thing – not enduring to part with any thing –

    straining to unite advantages essentially incompatible. Goods are to be bought

    of foreigners, but the money which should pay for them is not to be exported in

    return. Capital is to be obtained from foreigners, in alleviation of the waste

    produced by war loans, but the remuneration for it in the way of annuities, and

    the restitution of it in the redemption of the annuities is to be deplored and

    fought against as a grievance.