14 Decr 1801

Maximum

1

Should any one here observe, that a maximum is a sort of measure of which famine

might be the result, I admitt the truth of the observation without the smallest

difficulty /hesitation/. A government which with this instrument in its hand

should produce /propose/ to itself to produce a famine /give birth to that

calamity/ might go to work with the most perfect assurance of success. A

Physician, who should propose to himself to poison his patients, might be

equally well assured /afford him an equal assurance/ of success, by means of

Opium or Antimony. To The College of Physicians this property thus indisputably

belonging to these two useful drugs has never been a secret or matter of

dispute: yet opium and antimony maintain an undisputed place in the list of

useful medicines. Physicians, knowing that life and death depend upon number

weight and measure, are in the habit of bestowing upon those objects the

attention they deserve. If those who amuse themselves /the body politic/ with

speculating or operating upon the body politic, were as strict and as uniform in

their attention to those essential objects as those whose labours are employd

upon the natural body natural, there would be a little better logic and a little

less rhetoric would be heard and read, both within doors and without.

I admitt then that by means of a maximum, it is perfectly easy to make a famine:

but, in return

for