120 SKCTIONAL ADDRESSES. 



cut -l^er losses nearly twenty years before, and had enjoyed continuous 

 freedom from war on her own territory between 1794 and 1814, as we 

 have seen. She had been well, if autocratically, governed, and her war 

 indemnity was but a trilling burden. Her peasants were free and, as 

 a class, vigorous and hopeful. She was united and conscious of her 

 lendershipi in Europe, even through her ulthnate defeats. 



If the experience of Europe after Waterloo is, on the whole, of good 

 augury for agricultural States, and especially for agricultural States 

 with a competent central Government, for the industrialised modern 

 world that experience is less encouraging. Great Britain alone was 

 partially industrialised in 1815-!^0, and Great Britain, though victorious, 

 suffered acutely. Mismanagement was largely responsible for her 

 sufferings — mismanagement of, or rather, complete indifference to, 

 problems of demobilisation ; mismanagement of taxes (the income tax 

 was abandoned at the clamour of interested paiiies, and the interest on 

 the huge debt paid mainly from indirect taxes, which bore heavily 

 on the poor) ; mismanagement of food supplies, by the imposition of the 

 Corn Law ; and so on. But suffering due to international economic dis- 

 location following war could not have been avoided by management, 

 however good. The situation was unique. England alone of the Euro- 

 pean Powers had developed her manufactures to some extent on what 

 we call modern lines. During the wars she had accumulated also great 

 stores of colonial and American produce, which could only get into 

 Europe with difficulty — by way of smuggling. In 1813, before Napo- 

 leon's first fall, her manufacturers and merchants were eagerly awaiting 

 peace. In 1814 manufactures and colonial produce were rushed over, 

 only to find that, much as Europe desired them, it could not pay the 

 price. It had not enough to give in exchange ; and England, being 

 rigidly protectionist, was not always prepared to buy even what Europe 

 liad to give. There was no machineiy for international buying credits. 

 Merchants shipped at their own risks, usually as a venture, not against 

 a firm order as to-day, and they had to bear their own losses — often up 

 to 50 per cent. Continental economic historians have hardly yet foi'- 

 given us ior this ' dumping, ' which both drained away the precious 

 metals to England — as there was not much else to pay with — and did 

 a great deal of harm to the struggling 3'oung factory industries which 

 had begun to grow up under the protection of Napoleon's anti-English 

 commercial policy. 



British exporters were so badly bitten in 1814 that, when peace 

 finally came next year, after Waterloo, they were nervous of giving 

 orde)'s at home — which was very bad for the manufacturing industries 

 and for the men who sought employment in them. There was the 

 curious situation in 1816 that, while the piice of wheat was rushing 

 up, most other prices were falling, the bottom of tlie market being 

 often I'eached at the end of the year, when the confidence of buyers 

 and shippers began to revive. Eaw cotton, for instance, which had 

 touched 2s. Gd. a lb. in 1813-14, fell to a minimum of Is. 2d. in 

 1S16 — although Europe was open and cotton badly needed. 



It is as yet too early to work out a parallel between this post-war 

 commercial and industrial slump and the slump that followed the Great 



