While the industrial panic reached its height during April and May in France, in England the commercial panic reached its height in April and May. The same as the French, the English woolen industries suffered, and, as the French, so did the English silk manufacture. Though the English cotton factories went on working, it, nevertheless, was not with the same old profit of 1849 and 1850. The only difference was this: that in France, the crisis was an industrial, in England it was a commercial one; that while in France the factories stood still, they spread themselves in England, but under less favorable circumstances than they had done the years just previous; that, in France, the export, in England, the import trade suffered the heaviest blows. The common cause, which, as a matter of fact, is not to be looked for with-in the bounds of the French political horizon, was obvious. The years 1849 and 1850 were years of the greatest material prosperity, and of an overproduction that did not manifest itself until 1851. This was especially promoted at the beginning of 1851 by the prospect of the Industrial Exposition; and, as special causes, there were added, first, the failure of the cotton crop of 1850 and 1851; second, the certainty of a larger cotton crop than was expected: first, the rise, then the sudden drop; in short, the oscillations of the cotton market. The crop of raw silk in France had been below the average. Finally, the manufacture of woolen goods had received such an increment since 1849, that the production of wool could not keep step with it, and the price of the raw material rose greatly out of proportion to the price of the manufactured goods. Accordingly, we have here in the raw material of three staple articles a threefold material for a commercial crisis.
Apart from these special circumstances, the seeming crisis of the year 1851 was, after all, nothing but the halt that overproduction and overspeculation make regularly in the course of the industrial cycle, before pulling all their forces together in order to rush feverishly over the last stretch, and arrive again at their point of departure--the General Commercial Crisis. At such intervals in the history of trade, commercial failures break out in England, while, in France, industry itself is stopped, partly because it is compelled to retreat through the competition of the English, that, at such times becomes resistless in all markets, and partly because, as an industry of luxuries, it is affected with preference by every stoppage of trade. Thus, besides the general crisis, France experiences her own national crises, which, how-ever, are determined by and conditioned upon the general state of the world's market much more than by local French influences. It will not be devoid of interest to contrast the prejudgment of the French bourgeois with the judgment of the English bourgeois. One of the largest Liverpool firms writes in its yearly report of trade for 1851:
"Few years have more completely disappointed the expectations entertained at their beginning than the year that has just passed; instead of the great prosperity, that was unanimously looked forward to, it proved itself one of the most discouraging years during the last quarter of a century. This applies, of course, only to the mercantile, not to the industrial classes. And yet, surely there were grounds at the beginning of the year from which to draw a contrary conclusion; the stock of products was scanty, capital was abundant, provisions cheap, a rich autumn was assured, there was uninterrupted peace on the continent and no political and financial disturbances at home; indeed, never were the wings of trade more unshackled. . . . What is this unfavorable result to be ascribed to? We believe to excessive trade in imports as well as exports. If our merchants do not themselves rein in their activity, nothing can keep us going, except a panic every three years."
Imagine now the French bourgeois, in the midst of this business panic, having his trade-sick brain tortured, buzzed at and deafened with rumors of a "coup d'etat" and the restoration of universal suffrage; with the struggle between the Legislature and the Executive; with the Fronde warfare between Orleanists and Legitimists; with communistic conspiracies in southern France; with alleged Jacqueries [#2 Peasant revolts] in the Departments of Nievre and Cher; with the advertisements of the several candidates for President; with "social solutions" huckstered about by the journals; with the threats of the republicans to uphold, arms in hand, the Constitution and universal suffrage; with the gospels, according to the emigrant heroes "in partibus," who announced the destruction of the world for May 2,--imagine that, and one can understand how the bourgeois, in this unspeakable and noisy confusion of fusion, revision, prorogation, constitution, conspiracy, coalition, emigration, usurpation and revolution, blurts out at his parliamentary republic: "Rather an End With Fright, Than a Fright Without End."
Bonaparte understood this cry. His perspicacity was sharpened by the growing anxiety of the creditors' class, who, with every sunset, that brought nearer the day of payment, the 2d of May, 1852, saw in the motion of the stars a protest against their earthly drafts. They had become regular astrologers The National Assembly had cut off Bonaparte's hope of a constitutional prolongation of his term; the candidature of the Prince of Joinville tolerated no further vacillation.
