23 Decr 1801

Maximum

Ulteriora

1

The application of capital to agriculture can not keep pace with the accumulation

of the aggregate mass of capital. It is kept back by circumstances /impediments/

that do not apply in equal degree, if in any degree, to manufactures. The

occupier of a farm below a certain size. So much land as is in small farms /in

farms below a certain size/ is /stands/ excluded from the possibility of

receiving improvement. He sets out with an insufficient capital. The advantages

attendant on operations conducted upon a large scale are great /prodigious/ not

only in manufactures but in agriculture. Where they are wanting to a certain

degree accumulation can not take place. The magnitude of the farm is such as

barely to afford sustenance for the occupier and his family. The produce, the

profit and saving of the | | /each/ manufactures encrease ad infinitum in

proportion to the encrease of the custom he has for his goods. No encrease of

custom will enable even the most opulent farmer to produce a greater quantity of

his goods than can grow upon the quantity of land he occupies. By accident he

may obtain another farm, which by accident may happen to be situated within /at/

a convenient distance, and by another accident may not be too large for the

superfluous capital he has been able to lay /has at his command/. It is in this

way the additions that can be made to the agricultural capital are made. But it

may be seen even by this slight and superficial sketch how slow and uncertain

the progress of accumulation must be in this track.
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    Description: 23 Decr 1801

    Maximum

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    2

    The grand efficient cause of agricultural encrease is the consolidation of small

    landed properties and small farms. By selling his estate to a /an already/

    wealthy neighbour, a man who is starving upon a farm of £30 or £35 a year of his

    own, may obtain such a capital, as in a farm of profitable size, would place him

    at once in a state of affluence. A farm of £250 or £200 a year may thus be

    brought into the most improved and highest state of culture. It is in this way

    that small farms are gradually consolidated into large, the quantity of the

    national agricultural produce encreased together with the quantity /mass/ of

    population deriving sustenance from that produce, to the unspeakable advantage

    of all parties interested, amidst the cries /lamentations/ of so many wolves in

    sheep’s cloathing, and /mixed with/ sheep in their own cloathing, who cry /never

    cease crying/ out oppression and depopulation of so many idle lookers on who

    draw pictures of agricultural oppression and depopulation, copied, if they are

    to be believed from this universally /truly prosperous and universally/

    enriching and beneficial state of things. So far, so good: but the progress of

    this state of things is retarded by the impediments we have seen. Some centuries

    may yet elapse, before they are compleatly surmounted, and the whole of the

    culturable surface brought in consequence into the highest state of culture.

    Meantime capital employd in manufactures encreases without stint, and with it

    growing wealth and population beyond the incomes of home-bred sustenance.

    [marginal insertion:] Two factors are of course dropped in this picture: the

    consent of him who parts with his small property, and the beneficial equivalent,

    by the consideration of which that consent was produced.
  • Title: [18 Decr 1801 Maximum Ulteriora]
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    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

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

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  • Title: [18 Decr 1801 Maximum Ulteriora]
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    Render

    x5

    The following passage, from a work just published by Dr Render, points to facts,

    in their own nature notorious /matters of notoriety/, and such as at least may

    be worth enquiry.