9 Decr 1801

Maximum

2

a quantity of the old stock upon their hands, But /though/ even in this case it

would not be the interest to let the commodity go out of their hands at a lower

price and consequently at a quicker rate, unless in consequence of the final

glut produced by the intervening diminution of /in the/ consumption the ultimate

fall of price were to become so great as to do more than take back again from

them the intermediate profit derived from the intermediate artificial

scarcity.

But in the case of an extraordinary scarcity – a decided and known deficiency

this check no longer holds: the whole or a part scarce distinguishable from the

whole is necessary to keep the inhabitants alive: the whole must therefore be

bought at whatever price. By the poor themselves it could not have been bought

at a price anything near so high as that at which we have seen it bought: but by

the poor assisted by the rich it might be bought and has been bought at that

price and might have been bought at a price still greater /higher/: how much

higher it is /seems/ difficult to say. The quantity of money in the country

might in former times when money was gold and silver and the quantity of it

unlimited, have set a limit to this encrease – but now that money is paper – and

the quantity of paper without limit, the limits of the quantity capable of being

raised for the purchase of necessaries in the several hands through which they

have to pass are at any rate very ill defined.