LECKY ON THE LIMITATION OF PRICES. [To THE EDITOR OF
THE " SPECTATOR."'
Sta,—A limitation of prices imposed on potatoes has made potatoes impossible to obtain. The State now proposes a limitation on prices of other articles. They will cease to be obtainable too. Is not the following passage from Lecky intensely relevant?-
" In the beginning of 1777 Congress, with the warm approval of the great body of the people, determined to enter into a course which the more sagacious men in America knew to be little better than insane. It imagined that it could regulate all prices by law, and maintain them at a level greatly below that which the normal operation of the law of supply and demand had determined. Laws with this object were speedily made in all the States. The prices of labour, of food, of every kind of manufacture, of all domestic articles, were strictly regulated, and committees employed to see that these prices were not exceeded. The measure, of course, aggravated the very evil it was intended to diminish. Goods that were already very rare and greatly needed were carefully concealed and withdrawn from sale lest they should be purchased at prices below their real value. In most cases the law was disregarded, and sellers continued to sell, sometimes secretly, sometimes openly, at prices higher than the law permitted, charging an additional sum to compensate them for the risk they incurred. Mob violence directed against the engro.ssers, monopolisers, and forestallers,' combinations of the more patriotic merchants binding themselves to sell only at the authorised prices, newspaper denunciations and occasional legal punishments, were all insufficient and impotent; and in September, 1777, John Adams wrote that in his sincere opinion the Act for limiting prices, if not repealed, would 'ruin the State and introduce a civil war.' At last, in October, 1778, Congress voted that ' all limitations of prices of gold and silver be taken off,' but the [individual] States continued for some time longer to endeavour to regulate prices by legislation."—ifistory of England in the Eighteenth Century, Vol. IV., chap. xiv., 1882.
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