10 Dec r 1801

Maximum

6. Scarcity Crops

6

which the humanity of the Hon. Gentleman appears at one time /on this page/ at least to have leaned.

As to the word arbitrarily, in the passage where by a figure not of arithmetic but of speech he examines his antagonist upon interrogatories, and asks /asking/ him whether he would make the farmer a loser by arbitrarily reducing the price of his corn, the examinant I should conceive need not be in /at/ any great difficulty /pain/ about the answer. The authority he may say /answer/ is the same in the one case as in the other: it is the same authority you call in a few pages after to reduce the price of the farmers corn by bounties upon importation: you do not suppose it will act arbitrarily when it forces down the price of home grown corn by bounties upon foreign corn: you have no right to suppose it will act arbitrarily when it fixes /if it were to fix/ the price by a prohibition put upon higher prices. Parliament is the tool /being the authority/ you have to work with, you must take it as it is, and in both places make the most of it: you can not have it a good Parliament in one page, and an arbitrary one in another.