The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1849-09-25 00:00:00

CHAPTER VIII.

With the -month of April, 1847, it was generally ima-
gined that the worst of the crisis had passed by. The
drain for specie had decreased, and money had become
what is styled in mercantile parlance " easier," i. e., it
could be had at reasonable rates of interest by the very
wealthy. More cheerful faces were to be met with on
'Change and in commercial Ades ; and hope had been
revived by the weekly returns of the position of the Esta-
blishment in Threadneedle-street, in many a breast which
had recently throbbed with dread of impending ruin.
Yet it was strange that, although the rate of interest bad
fallen, and prices of commodities seemed gradually reco-
vering from their late terrible depression, an incubus was
felt to hang over a large portion of the mercantile world.
Confidence bad recently received too severe a shock to
return all at once. Men looked at each other with dis-
trust, as each remembered what had been the extent of
his individual losses. Speculation had almost ceased, and
parties only purchased to supply individual wants. It was
subsequently discovered that bankers and other members
of the monied interest, were at this time sedulously forti-
fying themselves by a reduction of the sphere of their
operations, and by accumulating money in their hands,
against a possible return of the pressure. Commercial
bills, as they became due, were withdrawn from circula-
tion ; and millions of that medium of exchange which in
a healthy state of things would have served as the basis
of extensive business operations, employed the national
industry, and stimulated the nationat enterprise, ceased
weekly to have existence. The effect was as if fetters
had suddenly been imposed upon the limbs of commerce,
or a line of circumvallation had been drawn round the
empire, binding us down within our own narrow
confines. _ _ _ _

.....
It was a hard, day by day, struggle with Mr. Manse!
and his son to steer through the next two or three months.
The secrets of commercial disaster are not invariably well
kept. It had oozed out that their firm had sustained one
heavy loss, and it was known that they had been called
upon to make serious sacrifices, and their necessary mo-
netary operations were no longer effected so easily as in
other times. Many a painful rebuff had to be endured ;
many a cruel slight to be put up with in uncomplaining
silence. Yet there were still happy hours spent within
their little family circle. The evils of the day were com-
pensated for by the affection which surrounded them at the
evening board. There was no longer the painful effort to
conceal the truth of their position ; no longer the neces-
sity to smile when the heart was bursting with sadness.
Occasionally, indeed, a fear of calamity worse than even
ruin and poverty itself would have been regarded, rushed
across the mind of Mrs. Manse!, as it struck her that her
beloved son appeared to be sinking in body under his ar-
duous exertions. He was paler and thinner, she thought,
than in happier days ; his cheerfulness of manner had left
him ; and when he was affectionately rallied into an effort
to be gay, his smile was languid, and his manner betrayed
severe effort. He never coatplained, however ; and the
fond mother would often reassure herself with the con-
clusion that it was perhaps only her mother's love which
suggested the possibility of coming ill.
Mrs. Mansel had well acted her part in the emergency
which commercial misfortune had brought upon them.
She had, indeed, more than fulfilled the confident expec-
tations which William had entertained of her firmness.
Already her household had been new modelled ; and its
expenditure, at all times moderate, greatly curtailed. She
had beguiled Mr. Mansel into the resolution to part with
his carriage. It would be, she said, so excellent a thing
to be released from the trouble of additional servants ;
and they could enjoy pleasant strolls together in the
evenings, as in their early noon of life. She could accom-
pany him, too, in the fine spring mornings a part of the
distance to the city, and meet him occasionally on his
return. In a hundred graceful ways little savings were
effected, in which her daughters cheerfully assisted her
exertions. Yet these were characterised by nothing re-
sembling meanness. There were no diminished comforts—
nothing calculated unpleasantly to remind either her hus-
band or her son of diminished means, or of altered pros-
pects. Invaluable to those who know how to prize them
are the gentle offices of woman in seasons of suffering ;
and Mr. Mansel never felt the innate beauty of character
and disposition of his life's partner so deeply as at this
moment, when she was thus assisting in lightening the
load which unforeseen calamity had heaped upon his head.
But a fresh struggle was to be gone through—a fiercer
crisis than that which the Mansells had thus far sur-
mounted. As the summer advanced there were boding
surmises about the yield of the coming harvest. Blight had
been detected here and there amongst the potato crop ;
and the wailing cry of Ireland—the cry of millions sunk
in the depths of misery and famine, dreading to see their
last hope swept from before their eyes, came bodingly
upon the wind. Fever, too, had thrown its dark shadow
over the large towns, and threatened to decimate our half
employed working population. At length, the universal
fear was confirmed. The fields of the husbandman, lately
green with the chief food of the working classes, and of
nine-tenths of the population of the sister kingdom, be-
came so many blackened masses of putrefaction ; and
again we were thrown into dependence upon the foreigner
for the elements of life for our people. Every market of
the world was drawn upon for supplies, and our ware-
houses and granaries began to groan beneath the weight
of the cereal products, which commercial enterprise had
provided. But was there here cause for any great national
calamity ? True, we had lost a few millions of capital
embarked in the cultivation of the soil, but the extent of
the loss was not a twentieth part of the national income.
It was not half of what, at one period of our history, we
had spent in foreign war; not half of what we had thrown
away in foreign loans. Within only a few years we had
spent ten times the amount in constructing railroads ; and
under a sound monitary system, the loss of the potatoe
crop would have been a serious calamity to the unfor-
tunate cultivators of the soil; but it could have exercised
no serious influence over the resources of the bulk of the
community. We might have even seen a revival of
activity in manufacturing pursuits and other branches of
industry, arising from the confidence that ultimately, our
large importations of foreign bread stuffs would be paid
for by British products. But we had not such a system :
and had to go through the same trying ordeal as that which
we had been subjected to in the year preceding. As food
poured into our seaports, specie began to be withdrawn, as
the only payment that would be accepted ; and as gold was
taken away from the coffers of the Bank of England, the
notes based upon it were withheld from circulation. We
had to arrest the pursuits of industry, not because of any
want of capital, but because we had not its representative
—currency. The effect would only have been the same as
if a decree had gone forth from the state, enacting that
every loom should stand still; that every employer of labour
should exist for a season by the sacrifice of his past accumu-
lations, and every labourer starve at home, or be kept idle
in the workhouses of the country. Week after week this
export of the precious metals went on, and the screw of
the Bank of England was turned tighter and tighter, until
discounts, except at the most ruinous rates, could scarcely
be had. In vain were the government appealed to for
relief, which it was easily within their power to grant. An
advance to the commercial classes of a few millions of the
notes, which were lying idle and useless in its coffers,
would have relieved the pressure at once ; hut government
was pledged to an inflexible system. The immediate
" convertibility of the bank note" must be maintained,
although half the community should be engulfed in the
effort. Fiat lex ; ruat ccelum ! The torture became at
length too much to be endured. We were on the verge
of a social convulsion. The position of the commercial
world will, however, best be explained in the language of
the following striking memorial, presented in the month
of October to the government, by the merchants of Liver-
pool:—
" To the Right Hon, the Lord John Russell, First Lord of Her
Majesty's Treasury. The Memorial of the undersigned
Bankers, Merchants, Traders, and others, Inhabitants of
Liverpool,
SHOWETH,—
That your memorialists beg respectfully to represent to your
Lordship the present deplorable condition of the trade, com-
merce, and manufactures of the country, and the imperative
necessity for such immediate relief as it may be in the power
of the government to afford. Produce of every description is
only saleable in small quantities and at an enormous sacrifice.
Bills of Exchange and the most valuable securities are in-
convertible into cash, even at great depreciation, except in the
most insignificant amounts. Foreign orders for produce and
goods cannot be executed for want of the customary facilities
for the disposal of bills drawn against them. Confidence is
all but annihilated, and the currency of the country is in a
great measure withdrawn and hoarded.
" It is needless, on this occasion, to inquire by what combi-
nation of causes this lamentable state of affairs has been
brought about. A crisis of unparalleled severity exists, and
your memorialists believe that it is in the power of government
to allay alarm and restore confidence, by coming to the relief
of the commercial and manufacturing classes by a temporary
advance on the credit of the country.
" Your memorialists believe that it is not only the interest,
but the duty, of Government to afford relief, inasmuch as they
confidently believe that the utter prostration of the manufac-
turing and commercial interests cannot otherwise be prevented,
whereby the labouring population will be immediately thrown
out of employment, and an amount of misery and destitution
will be witnessed, unexampled in the annals of the country.
" Your Lordship may depend upon us when we assure you
that, if the present pressure be not removed, merchants, and
other traders of undoubted respectability, who are not only
solvent but rich, and who have merchandise and bills, which,
under ordinary circumstances, would afford easy and ample
means of meeting engagements, will inevitably be compelled
to stop payment."