ABSTRACT
The influence of such a crisis as this in America reacted most injuriously upon Great Britain. Those who had made advances on American produce at high prices-and they had been made on a stupendous scale-saw no way of recovering their money. Those who bad lent on lands or other estates, or had invested in the sl1ares of American banks, saw their fortunes swept a. way at a stroke. American credit in England received a blow from which it took a long time to revive, and English literature was eu1icbed by some scathing diatribes against American rascality and breach of faith. Not until1839 was the full extent of the disaster appreciated, when a series of failures occurred far in excess of the a '"erage ; the gold reserve in the Bank of England fell to little over two millions and a. half; and unless exceptional measures had been resorted to, another financial crisis of a still worse character than that of 1837 would have f<lliowed the
Yet throughout ali this anarchy and apparent itnpoverisbment, the well-to-do classes, it cannot be too often repeated, were becoming steadily richer, and the wealth of the country, as well as its power to produce more wealth, constantly and continuously grew. Exports and imports mounted upwards, the fluctuations bearing but a small proportion to the bulk of the whole. Public buildings, private mansions, great factories, vast warehouses, public works calling for huge capital expenditure, were all being erected at t he very time when the state of large portions of the population occasioned grave anxiety to the state.>nul.n, the economist, and the philanthropist alike. Within a pedod of thirty yeurs the annual rental of real property in England and Wales alone incrca.~ed by £40,000,000 . the tonnage of ve."-Sels sailing under the English flag was six-fold greater than it bad been at the beginning of the century.
