ABSTRACT
During the twelve years of peace which intervened between the Seven Years’ War and the first American war, the commerce and wealth of Liverpool increased more rapidly than they had ever done before. Liverpool had taken the lead of all the seaports of the empire in the American and the African trades, and also possessed a large share in the trade of the West Indies; the two latter branches of commerce being too frequently cemented with the blood of slaves. As the pressure of the wars with France and the continental powers fell with greater severity on the commerce of London, Hull, and even Bristol, than on that of Liverpool, owing to their geographical position and their greater commercial intercourse with Europe, so the commercial ruin caused by the first and second war with America fell more severely on Liverpool than on any other port, owing to the extent of its American and West Indian connections.
