ABSTRACT
In a pamphlet titled Reflections suggested by a perusal of Mr. J. Horsley Palmer's pamphlet on the causes and consequences of the pressure on the money market, published in February 1837, Samuel Jones Loyd (later Lord Overstone) famously characterized with the following words the recurrence of periods of expansion of trade, followed by a collapse and a stagnation:
The history of what we are in the habit of calling the ‘state of trade’ is an instructive lesson. We find it subject to various conditions which are periodically returning; it revolves apparently in an established cycle. First we find it in a state of quiescence, – next improvement, – growing confidence, – prosperity, – excitement, – overtrading, – convulsion, – pressure, – stagnation, – distress, – ending again in quiescence.
(Overstone, 1837a. 31)