10 Dec r 1801

Maximum

6. Scarcity Crops

4

The decision would be a human one: but as partial humanity must have its limits, let us in this instance, catch some sort of glance at the effect of it upon the whole.

Precision does not appear upon this /the/ occasion to have been /of this pamphlet to have been in any considerable degree/ the hon. Gentleman’s aim, at least as far as the aim may be judged of by the effect. If it had been, a few figures I mean of arithmetic not of speech, would /might/ have been in that point of view more satisfactory more eligible than the interrogations – and the almost total failure of crops – and the possibility, and nothing more than possibility of a loss, which under the supposed excess of price is supposed to be result of the almost total failure. Had it not been for the context if I had been called upon to give a picture of the Hon. Gentlemans almost total failure, I should /might/ have represented by some such deficiency as that of nine tenths: but as the loss supposed is such an one as /degree of deficiency understood, must be no /not be any/ greater than/ the Hon. Gentleman would wish to see made up, possibities apart by the price, I will, in the midst of my perplexity – protesting it to be merely for illustration, pitch upon a failure of considerably less magnitude – a failure corresponding for example to a deficiency of three fourths. Rejecting the value of /quantity representative of the value of/ the Hon. Gentleman’s possibility, as a quantity too troublesome to deal with, the price to be allowed of and wished for for the purpose

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