ABSTRACT
That there Wtl<l plenty of capital seeking iuvesttnent at this time was abundantly shown by the enormous sums paid into new companies, and the expenditure in the course of a few years on railways of £70,000,000. The close of the American War in 1865 gave a further impulse to new business, which the development of trade with China. India, and Australia likewise encoul'aged. The threatenings of war between Prussia and Italy on the one side, against Austria on the other, gave as littll:l ground for unea.siness in Great Britain as the war between France and Austria bad given in 1859. For, as at all such periods, a neutral power in the position of England gained both in the demands for the manufactures, and in the extension of her already enormous carrying trade. At this period, too, in the year 1865 that is, the total amount of wealth in Great Britain was put at £6,100,000,000. Of course, a capitalised value of this sort is in many respect.~ purely imaginary, a.s, for instance, the capital value of laud taken at a given number of years' pm·chase of its rents; but on the same bas is tho capitalised "laluo in lol4 was but £2,300,000,000, or little more than one-third of the amount, wl.ile the population in the meantime had increased only fifty per cent. 'l'here was again, therefore, nothing in the extent of wealth creation to justify a.n anticipation of a crash in 1866, nor was there any great evidence of inflation at the time. Some even go so far as to maintain that the crisis of ll>G6 was not a.u iudustria.l cl'isis at al~ and it is true
that tbe ordinary symptoms of crisis were not apparent in the trade retums. But it is quite impossible that the downfall of a single house, however powerful, prepared for beforehand as it had been, could have given such a shake to credit and brought about as it did a stagnation in home trade, had there not been a good deal of foolish investment and wtld speculation in the years immediately preceding.
