AUSTRALIA 45 



In the year 1815, the British Q-overument, with a view to 

 encouraging agriculture, passed a law and fixed the price of 

 wheat at 80/- a quarter. The law was operative only for a 

 short time, when, in spite of the penalty imposed, wheat was 

 bought and sold at 38/- a quarter, and the statute became a dead 

 letter. A little further back, in the years of the French 

 Eevolution, price fixing was the order of the day, and very heavy 

 penalties were imposed on those who failed to bring their produce 

 to market and offer it publicly at the price fixed. The price 

 of wheat was fixed, the price of oats, and the prices of many 

 other things. Instead of having the effect desired, it had the 

 opposite. The low prices fixed caused production to fall off 

 in all directions, and products, especially wheat, became scarcer 

 and scarcer, until bread was almost unprocurable. Every- night, 

 long before dajdight, crowds gathered at the bakers' shops, and 

 when daylight came fought for the few loaves offering. Chil- 

 dren were starving on the highways, and it was a common sight 

 to see w^men with children in their arms fighting for a crust. 

 The peasants said they would sooner eat their oats themselves 

 than sell them at the price fixed by the Government. The law 

 fixing prices was called the law of the maximum. Professor 

 Sybel, in his famous history of the Revolution, says. — "There 

 was great distress all through France owing to the Government 

 putting a fixed price on corn" (wheat). "Owing to the law 

 of the maxnnum, all goods began to avoid the market." "The 

 law of the maximum first frightened the goods from the market 

 and then paralysed production." "The law of the maximum 

 had the effect of impeding trade, and preventing the regular 

 supply of goods to the people. ' ' Then the professor goes on to 

 say : — ' ' The case was not so bad in most of the departments with 

 regard to meat, as with bread, because the law of the maximum 

 had forgot to fix a tariff for live cattle, and the peasants had, 

 therefore, slaughtered as few beasts as possible in Robespierre's 

 time, and now brought to market and sold as much meat as was 

 wanted at good prices." "There was plenty of meat obtain- 

 able, because the law of the maximum did not apply to 

 cattle." Less than five years of this interference with trade 

 on the part of the Government brought the people to such a state 

 of destitution and misery that at last they awoke to the fol'ly 

 of trying to override natural economic laws ; and the National 

 Assembly swept the whole of this legislation from the statute 

 book. Tlien business began immediately to revive. The cele- 

 brated economist, Henry Dunning Macleod, in dealing with this 



