XLIII. had been rendered so difficult from the sudden contrac- CHAP. tion of the currency in the last months of 1847, and the simultaneous occurrence of internal and external disasters, 1847. at the same period, in the British Islands, and on the xcv. 475. continent of Europe.1* 1 Parl. Deb. tions in the visions. The next circumstance which came to aggravate most 117. seriously the general distress arising from the monetary Vast variacrisis, was the extreme variations which occurred in the price of procourse of the year in the price of provisions. Wheat, which in February had been at 102s. the quarter, was selling in November at 48s., and all other species of grain in proportion. The effect of this prodigious change, the consequence of the Irish famine and vast importation, besides involving almost every person engaged in the grain trade in ruin, was to expose the working classes, during the first half of the year, to all the suffering produced by famine-prices, and to subject all those engaged in the cultivation of the soil, in the latter part of it, to severe distress, arising from the difficulty, with such reduced prices, of paying rents and poor-rates. The effect of this was very serious; for it at once spread the embarrassment from the commercial to the agricultural classes, who for some years had enjoyed a considerable degree of prosperity; and thus reopened the old divisions arising from the repeal of the Corn Laws, at the very time when the united efforts of all classes were required to stem the flood of misfortune with which the nation was from other causes overwhelmed. Contemporaneous with this evil was another of still greater magnitude, which for the whole of 1848 seriously Subsequent to 1839, from the great monetary pressure in England, the price of cotton had fallen in England to about half of what it was in 1838, so that it became more profitable to cultivate maize, sugar, and coffee, than cotton. From this cause our cotton manufactures have been suffering from a scarcity in the raw material, in these fabrics, and a rise in its price."-MR CAYLEY, Dec. 1847; Parl. Deb. xcv. 6, 75.—Mr Cayley's speech on this occasion was the best delivered in either house of Parliament; and so Lord J. Russell admitted. 1848. 118. effect of the 1848. CHAP. affected the export trade to several countries of Europe, XLIII. and produced a considerable diminution in the general exports of the country. This was the FRENCH REVOLUPernicious TION IN FEBRUARY, which overturned Louis Philippe, French Re induced for a brief season a republican government, and volution of was the harbinger of numberless calamities to every part of Europe. Previous to that great event there had been a very severe monetary crisis in France in the latter part of 1847; but the convulsion of the succeeding year paralysed commerce in that country so completely that the British exports to it fell at once to considerably less than a half of what they had been in the preceding year, and did not recover for some years after. The same was the case in a lesser degree with Germany, to both of which countries the convulsion rapidly spread, and the effect, combined with the monetary crisis in Great Britain itself, was to lower the general exports of the country six millions. This was not a very great decline on an export trade at that period amounting to £58,000,000; but coming as it did at a period when the country was already overwhelmed by difficulties arising from other causes, it proved a very serious aggravation of the general distress. 119. Immense influx of destitute Western Serious as this source of embarrassment was to the classes engaged in the export trade to Europe, it yet yielded in importance to the effect of the prodigious inundation of Irish poor which flowed into all the western counties of Britain, at the same period, from the effects of the famine in Ireland. The numbers which, impelled by hunger and the dread of starvation, then crowded every vessel from the ports of Ireland to those of Britain, would XLIII. 1848. 1 Lord Parl. Deb. be deemed incredible if not attested by contemporary evi- CHAP. dence, and ascertained by authentic inquiry. It has been already mentioned, that such was the influx of Irish poor into Liverpool in December 1847, that in eleven days the parishes of that city had to furnish relief to 198,000 paupers in addition to those of their own; and that it was deemed a subject of general thankfulness when the number Brougham, was only 2000 a-week.1 And it was ascertained by an Ixxxix. 771. official inquiry, set on foot in the latter city by the magistrates and sheriff, that between November 1, 1847, and April 1, 1848, no less than 42,800 Irish landed at Glasgow, almost all in a state of destitution, and not a few bringing with them the seeds of contagion and death. The magnitude of this burden will not be duly appreciated unless it is kept in view that in Glasgow, and its immediate vicinity, there were in the latter month 39,000 persons knowledge, out of employment, involving at least 100,000 more in utter founded on misery. It is not going too far to say that, during the quiry. winter and spring of 1847-48, half a million of Irish poor migrated into, and settled permanently, in the provinces of western Britain, then suffering severely under their own causes of disaster-a transposition of the human race unparalleled in modern times, and which resembles the era, twelve centuries before, when the myriads of the migratory northern nations poured into the decaying provinces of the Roman Empire. Personal official in 120. the pres sure on the One circumstance which had never before occurred, rendered this monetary crisis, beyond any other, long con- Extreme tinued and severe, especially to the middle classes. This severity of was the immense sums which, during the prosperous years middle 1845 and 1846, had been invested in railway shares, classes. chiefly by those classes in towns; undertakings which not only required a very great expenditure of capital, but a very long time for their completion. The sums requisite to finish the railways which had been undertaken, were little short of £300,000,000; and in Dec. 1845, there had been paid up of this sum £100,000,000, the shares VOL. VII. Ꮓ XLIII. 1 Tooke, v. 273. CHAP. corresponding to which were worth £160,000,000. But two years after-in Dec. 1849-the aspect of things was 1848. totally changed. The sum paid up was then no less than £230,000,000; and the market price of the whole was only £110,000,000, showing a loss on the paid-up capital of £120,000,000; and on the market value, compared with Dec. 1845, of £150,000,000. The effects of this immense change were to the last degree disastrous. As has been well observed by Tooke, "During 1844 and 1845, every person engaged in railway speculation grew richer and richer, and from 1847 to 1850, every person holding railway shares grew poorer and poorer. The consequence was, that great numbers of the railway undertakings were abandoned, and those which were continued were carried on only at the cost of an incredible amount of suffering and ruin to the persons engaged in them.* What rendered the demands for payment of the calls on these shares so eminently disastrous, was, that unless they were paid up, the whole money previously advanced upon them was lost; that a great proportion of them had become unsaleable, and none could be disposed of, but at a ruinous loss; and that, at the very time when the calls upon them were most urgent, the banks, one and all, sternly refused all accommodation, even on the most ample security. The contraction of the currency by eight millions at a time when an extension of it was most loudly called for, rendered such refusals on their part a matter of absolute necessity. In these circumstances, the calls on the railway shares, which Newmarsh, in 1848 and 1849 were not less than £100,000,000, 369, 372 had to be provided almost entirely from the incomes and Sept. 22, savings of the unfortunate shareholders, who were chiefly way Times, found in the middle and wealthier classes; and when it is Sept. 30, 2 Tooke and Economist, 1849; Rail 1849. recollected that this occurred during a period of a severe monetary crisis, great foreign anxiety, and absolute famine * "In December 1845, the official list of the London Stock Exchange quoted no less than 280 different kinds of railway shares; in December 1849, the number had fallen to 160."-TOOKE and NEWMARSH, V. 371. XLIII. 1848. in the neighbouring island, it may be conceived what CHAP. ruin and suffering they necessarily occasioned,* and at what a sacrifice to the nation the magnificent network of railways, with which it is now overspread, has been constructed. 121. benefits of expendi ture. Yet has the vast, and to the individuals concerned, too often ruinous expenditure on these railways, been attended Immediate with important benefits, both immediate and ultimate, to the railway the country. In the first instance, it forcibly prolonged re a great, and to the working classes profitable, outlay on the wages of labour, under circumstances when, but for the peculiar nature of these investments, it would have been entirely stopped. It is evident that when the ordinary banks refused to grant any further accom "From the fall of dividends on all the lines, and continued pressure of calls, the distrust of all railway property became such, (that towards the autumn of 1849 large masses of it were practically unsaleable. The retrospect of the third quarter of 1849 is the most dismal picture it has ever been our duty to lay before our readers. Gloom, panic, and confusion, appeared to have taken full possession of the railway market, and a commensurate depression in the value of all lines, good, bad, and indifferent, has been the result. A glance at the market will suffice to convey a knowledge of the overwhelming depreciation which now exists,-a depreciation including even the principal lines, the main arteries of the internal traffic of the country. Within the last few weeks the stock of the London and North-Western Railway has fallen 20 per cent. In some of the Journals, the loss in September 1849, sustained by the then holders of railway shares, has been estimated at so large an amount as 180 millions sterling.”—Kailway Times, Sept. 30, 1849. The following Table exhibits the variations on the price of the stock of the leading railways, from Jan. 1846 to Jan. 1852, when the gold discoveries set in: Thus, even after the lapse of seven years, the prices of railway stock, till the gold discoveries came into play, which they did in 1852, was even in the most favourable cases little more than a half, in many only a third or a fourth, of what it had been at the beginning of the period. |