ABSTRACT
The first grave doubts as to the divine character of the capitalist order
came to bourgeois economists under the immediate impact of the first
crises of 1815 and 1818-19 in England. Even then it had still been
external circumstances which led up to these crises, and they appeared
to be ephemeral. Napoleon’s blockade of the Continent which for a
time had cut off England from her European markets and had favoured
a considerable development of home industries in some of the contin-
ental countries, was partly responsible; for the rest the material exhaus-
tion of the Continent, owing to the long period of war, made for a
smaller demand for English products than had been expected when the
blockade was lifted. Still, these early crises were enough to reveal to the
contemporary world the sinister aspects of this best of all social orders.
Glutted markets, shops filled with goods nobody could buy, frequent
bankruptcies-and on the other hand the glaring poverty of the toiling
masses-for the first time all this starkly met the eyes of theorists who
had preached the gospel of the beautiful harmonies of bourgeois laissez-
faire and had sung its praises in all keys. All contemporary trade reports,
periodicals and travellers’ notes told of the losses sustained by English
merchants. In Italy, Germany, Russia, and Brazil, the English disposed
