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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 1332: COMMERCIAL AFFAIRS.
By Edward Farr
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About This Book

The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

COMMERCIAL AFFAIRS.

The year did not begin or end very prosperously in business and monetary matters. The successive blights of the potatoe crop, the advances to Ireland, the ruinous bankruptcies of 1848, the enormous railway calls, the many failures upon the continent of both banking-houses and commercial establishments, by which English firms sustained great losses, and the continued disturbance of commercial relations in consequence of the civil conflicts on the continent, were causes sufficiently numerous and potent to create and sustain apprehension, and embarrass the usual proceedings of trade. Still money flowed into England from continental Europe, as the place of security which, whatever might betide the world, was supposed to be beyond the range of political convulsion. Thus capital was plentiful, and money was easily obtained by all creditable establishments. The peace, good order, and constitutional liberty by which these blessings were established, afforded England a source of prosperity amidst so much that was calculated to impoverish. The wrecks of many nations floated around her shores, but within her borders all was safe; the shadow of the thunder-cloud passed over her, and she heard its peals, as it burst in lightning and torrent on less favoured lands.