date

23 Decr 1801 Maximum Ulteriora
23 Decr 1801

Maximum

Ulteriora

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.
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    Description: 23 Decr 1801

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    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

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

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  • Title: [20 Decr 1801 Maximum Ulteriora]
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    I have heard of a plan for ordering /an intention so to order/ matters that /an

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    rise as high as 10s a bushel, I suppose by restraint on importation till it has

    arrived at that mark: and I have heard that price admitted to be sufficient,

    though not more than sufficient, but the means insufficient, unless a bounty on

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    If what is above observed respecting the want of land be just, that or any still

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    be given, the amount of it will be so much thrown away. The quantity of

    cultivated land not being augmented, or at least not being augmented in

    proportion to the existing deficiency of corn /agricultural produce/, added to

    the growing superflux of population, whatever quantity is added to corn will be

    so much taken from other produce. As to the bounty so much as it amounts

    /amounted/ to , by so much would the scarcity and price of the aggregate of all

    agricultural produce taken together be enhanced. So much more corn as was

    produced in consequence so much less of other agricultural produce would be

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  • Title: [19 Dec.r 1801 Maximum Ulteriora]
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    It is necessary /true/ to cast off prejudices /antipathies and panics/ of all

    sorts, and look difficulties in the face. Subsistence must remain for ever

    precarious, or magazines must be established. Wheat with the inferior grains

    rather than […?]-rice {I should suppose} from Hindostan would stand clearest of

    objection. The objections that have been urged against magazines are strong,

    perhaps conclusive. But they all turn upon a state of things in which we have

    ceased /out of which we have emerged/, and in which nothing but some unexampled

    calamity can replace us. They turn upon a /an habitual/ sufficiency either

    actual or possible, of the average stock of grain for the stock of /subsistence

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    unexampled and improbable amount, the very possibility of such a sufficiency is

    gone for ever. Population has already outstripped culture. Population having no

    limit, so long as food is to be had from abroad in exchange for wealth – that

    culture should ever again keep pace with it /it should ever be overtaken by

    culture/ seems altogether improbable, that it should long continue so to do is,

    unless contiguous land were to arise out of the sea, impossible.