14 Dec.r 1801

Maximum

Conclusion

1

Even Supposing, if I may be allowed so to do for argument’s sake the utility and

success as well as the adoption of the measure, it will require no small degree

of the purest and rarest sort of public spirit as well as firmness /fortitude/

on the part of government /administrators/ to embrace it /to propose it/. I know

/can think/ of no state of things in which any very general approbation could

reasonably be expected for it. If after the establishment of the maximum price

the actual price should continue every where below it, the law could then be

said, with or without reason, to be without effect: if the actual price should

have risen every where or any where to the maximum price, the encrease of price

might, and by many naturally would be attributed not to the scarcity, but to the

law: in the first case, your law is inefficacious /useless/ - it would be said –

in the other, mischievous. In the first case, does it absolutely follow from the

mere state of the case that the law will have been useless – that it can not

have contributed any thing to the keeping down of the price? The answer is more

than I could undertake to give with confidence. I see no absurdity in the

supposition, that the acknowledged /recognized/ impossibility of seeing the

actual