Benns: British West India Carrying-Trade 123 
factures were in full employment; the various departments of the iron 
trade were flourishing; on all sides new buildings were in the progress 
of erection; and money was so abundant, that men of enterprise, though 
without capital, found no difficulty in commanding funds for any plau- 
sible undertaking/” 
The year preceding the enactment of the new navigation laws 
had shown a considerable increase in Great Britain’s foreign 
trade, and in the number of new ships built and registered.^^ 
Merchants and ship-owners could afford to be tolerant of the 
changes made. 
Due to a number of causes, however, a financial crisis oc- 
curred toward the close of the year 1825, “and a panick, such 
as never had been witnessed since the fatal South Sea Bubble, 
shook all commercial credit to its foundations”.^^ finan- 
cial embarrassments reached their height early in December; 
and for some days the agitation in the City exceeded everything of the 
kind that had been witnessed for many years. Lombard-street was 
nearly filled with persons hastening to the different banks to draw 
money, or waiting in anxious fear of hearing of new failures.^^ 
The Annual Register for 1825 published a list of seventy-three 
“of the principal banking houses which failed or suspended 
their payments” towards the close of that year.^^ “Thus won- 
derfully was the contrast between the commencement and the 
close of the . . . year.”^® As it had happened that the 
change in the British commercial system had not long pre- 
ceded the panic, “there were not wanting individuals to con- 
nect the two together, and to describe the one as the cause, 
and the other as the effect”.^® The changes which had been 
made in the British commercial system had originally met with 
opposition from the ship-owners ; but after the crisis of 1825, 
they met also “with the animadversion of the Members of 
Parliament”. The foreign trade of Great Britain showed a 
tremendous decline during 1826, the total exports being only 
a little more than half those for 1824.^® On the other hand, 
the prosperous years preceding had led to an increased build- 
Annual Register, LXVII, 2, 
See tables of foreign trade and navigation in Annual Register, LXVII, Appendix, 
310, 313; LXVIII, Appendix, 302, 305. 
StaTpleton, Political Life of Canning, III, 2. 
Annual Register, LXVII, 123. 
14 /bid., LXVII, 123, 124, note. 
15 /bid., LXVII, 124. 
15 Stapleton, Political Life of Canning, III, 22, 23. 
11 /bid. 
1* See table of foreign trade in Annual Register, LXIX, Appendix, 278. 
