ABSTRACT
The heavy fall in the price o£ wheat which tumbled in four months from 102s. to 48s. the quarter, thougi. very advant>~geous to the people at large, brought about one failure after another among grain houses which had not anticipated any such sudden change. I n Octo bet·, the bank rate of discount was 8 per cent, and Con sols had gone down from 94 in January, 1847. to 79 in that month. Railway shares fell 15 to 2!'i per cent., bills ·::ould scarcely be discounted at any price, respectable houses were closing their doors by the dozen, workmen were being discharged in every uirection, 2,500 navvies being left workless by the contractors for the London and North Western Rai lW•\Y alone. Tens of thousands of workers were, iu fact, out of employment and starving, and Lhe condition of the people during the wintet· seemed likely to be worse than ever, while, what wa.~ taking place already in Ireland, aud what followed in that awful winter of J 847. ba.s ne,•er been forgotten or forgiven by Irishmen in any part of the world
panic. As the gold was drained o.way to meet foreign demands, the di•·ectors were forced by the conditions of their charter to lessen the accommodation w!Jicb they could give at the very moment when the need for sue!• o.ccommodation was most pressing, and nothing short of the most liberal extension of credit to those who could reasonably rlemand it could, by any possibility, check the panic. The bank rate stood at 8 per ce:;~ .• and befot·e the Bank Act was suspended and the directors were permitted to issue notes in excess of the £15,000,000 allowed by law without holding gold against them, the banking department was actually reduced to less than £2,000,000. The bank mus~ have stopped payment so far as the banking depaf. ment was concerned, unless what was virtually bank-•·uptcy had been declared and the Bank Act bad been &uspended. This suspension itself, though it improved matters, did not at once end the crisis, which dragged on for fully three months more. Confidence had been immediately shaken, and the lo.ck of coin tended to lengthen the period of inevitable distrust.
