British Commerce (November 1861)

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London, Nov. 2, 1861

The English Board of Trade Returns for the nine months ending Sept. 30, 1861, show in exports a large diminution, and in imports a still larger increase. A comparison between the export lists of the last three years gives the following general result:

Value of Exports for the nine months ending Sept. 30.

1859	£98,037,311
1860	101,724,346
1861	93,795,332

Consequently the exports of this year, if compared to the corresponding period of 1860, have decreased by £7,929,014; of which total decrease the by far larger portion, viz.: £5,671,730, is accounted for by the sudden contraction of the American trade. The rates in which the general loss derived from this source has affected the different branches of British industry may be seen from the annexed table:

Value of Exports to the United States in the nine months ending Sept. 30.

	1859 £	1860 £	1861 £
Beer and ale	78,060	76,843	25,642
Coals and culm	144,556	156,665	200,244
Cottons	2,753,782	2,776,472	1,130,973
Earthenware and porcelain	448,661	518,778	191,606
Haberdashery and millinery	1,204,085	1,083,438	542,312
Linens	1,486,276	1,337,778	493,654
Hardwares and cutlery	865,066	776,772	446,095
Metals—Iron—Pig	205,947	165,052	79,086
Bar, bolt, and rod	642,822	546,493	148,587
Railway of all kinds	744,505	665,619	168,657
Cast	16,489	17,056	9,239
Wrought of all kinds	357,162	378,842	125,752
Steel, unwrought	372,465	457,490	216,246
Copper, sheets and nails	99,422	44,971	10,005
Lead, pig	53,451	66,015	1,451
Tin plates	935,692	833,644	274,488
Oil Seed	122,570	72,915	1,680
Salt	63,876	84,818	59,809
Silk stuffs, handkerchiefs, and ribbons	197,605	102,393	88,360
Other silk articles	129,557	93,227	22,984
Soda	439,584	399,153	142,311
Spirits, (British)	53,173	56,423	12,430
Woolens—Cloths of all kinds	586,701	535,130	250,023
Mixed stuffs, flannels, blankets, etc	1,732,224	1,612,284	652,399
Worsted Stuffs	1,052,053	840,507	377,597
Total	15,785,784	13,698,778	5,671,730

Beyond the diminution due to the decrease of the American trade, the general exports show, moreover, a decline of £2,257,284. The greater part of this loss was incurred during the month of September, when the high price of cotton, and the consequent rise in cotton manufactures and yarns, had begun to powerfully react on the markets of British North America, East India, and Australia. During the whole period of nine months ended September, 1861, Turkey and Germany were, next to the United States, the countries foremost in restraining their absorption of British merchandise. The export trade to France has not grown in any observable degree, the only striking instance of increase being- limited to an agricultural article, viz., sheeps’ and lambs’ wool. During the first nine months of 1860, England exported to France 4,735,150 pounds of wool, worth £354,047.

During the corresponding period of this year, that export has risen to 8,716,082 pounds, valued at £642,468. The only other remarkable feature in the export returns refers to Italy. British exports to the new kingdom are evidently enlarging, which fact will go a great length in accounting for English sympathies with Italian liberty. Thus, for instance, the export of British cottons to Sardinia, Tuscany, Naples, and Sicily, has increased from £756,892 in 1860, to £1,204,287 in 1861; the export of cotton yarns from £348,158 in 1860 to £538,373 in 1861; the export of irons from £120,867 in 1860, to £160,912 in 1861.

The import tables extend only to the first eight months of the current year. Their general result is shown by the subsequent figures:

1859	£88,993,762
1860	106,894,278
1861	114,588,107

The principal part of that increase of imports is due to a large addition in the purchase of foreign wheat, which, from £6,796,131 in the first eight months of 1860, had risen to £13,431,487 in the corresponding period of 1861. As to raw cotton, the quantity imported had, during the period referred to, only slightly fallen off, while the price of the article had largely increased, as will be seen from the annexed figures:

Quantity of Cotton imported (during the first eight months).

	Cwts.	Value.
1859	8,023,082	£24,039,197
1860	10,616,347	28,940,676
1861	9,616,087	30,809,279

There exist no general politics at the present moment in England. Everything and everybody are absorbed in the industrial question and the American crisis. I called your attention in a former letter to the feverish state of the Liverpool cotton market.b For the last two weeks it has exhibited, in fact, all the symptoms of the railway mania in 1845. Surgeons, dentists, physicians, barristers, cooks, workingmen, clerks and lords, comedians and parsons, soldiers and sailors, newspaper writers and boarding school mistresses, males and females, all were speculating in cotton. Many of the lots purchased, sold and resold amounted to only one, two, three, or four bales. More considerable quantities remained in the same warehouses, although changing their proprietors twenty times. One who had purchased cotton at 10 o’clock offered it for sale at T1 o’clock, and realized a profit of ‘^d. on one pound. Many lots circulated in this way through several hands in 12 hours. This week, however, a sort of reaction has taken place, due to the single circumstance that a shilling is a round number, being composed of 12d., and that most people had resolved upon selling out so soon as the price of the pound of cotton should have been pushed to one shilling; consequently, there set in suddenly a great increase in the offers of cotton, and hence a reaction in its price. This, however, can be only transitory.

The British mind once become familiar with the idea that a pound of cotton may cost 15d., the temporary barrier to speculation will break down, and the speculating mania reappear with redoubled fury. There is one thing favorable to the United States in this movement. It is hostile to the breaking-of-blockade party. Already there have been published protests on the part of the speculators, in which it is reasonably said that any warlike movement by the British Government would be an act of direct injustice to those merchants who, on the faith of the British Government’s adherence to its recognized and avowed principle of non-interference, had made their calculations, speculated at home, sent out their orders abroad and purchased cotton on an estimate of the price which it would reach under the operation of natural, probable and foreseeable courses.

This day’s Economist publishes a very foolish article, in which, from statistics given as to the population and the area of the United States, he arrives at the conclusion that there would be room enough for the establishment of at least seven vast empires, and that, consequently, “the dream of universal dominion” ought to be banished from the hearts of the Unionists. The only rational inference which The Economist might have drawn from its own statistical statements, viz., that the Northerners, even if they liked to do so, could not desist from their claims without sacrificing to Slavery the vast States and Territories “in which Slavery still lingers, but cannot maintain itself as a permanent institution” — this only rational conclusion he successfully contrives not even to touch upon.

Apart from its own commercial difficulties, England is simultaneously bothered by the critical state of the French finances. The maneuvers of the Bank of France to stay the bullion drain to England by accommodation bills, obtained from the Rothschilds and other great firms, have, as was to be foreseen, resulted in a but temporary mitigation of her embarrassments. She has now successively applied for succor to the banks at Berlin, Hamburg, and St. Petersburg; but all these tentatives, instead of procuring relief, have only betrayed despair. The straits to which the French Government is actually put appear from two measures recurred to in the course of a fortnight. The interest on the Treasury bills, in order to keep them afloat, had to be raised to 7 1/2 per cent, while Victor Emmanuel was commanded to partially postpone the instalments of the new Italian loan, of which French capitalists hold a very large amount. He, of course, acceded to the application of his patron.

In the Tuileries there are now two opposite influences, proposing two opposite nostrums for the temporary cure of the financial disease. The real Bonapartists, Persigny, and the Crédit Mobilier, cherish a project by which to subject the Bank of France to the direct and complete control of the Government, to convert her into a mere dependency on the Treasury, and to use the power thus obtained for the unrestricted emission of inconvertible State paper money. The other party, represented by Fould, and other renegades of former regimes, propose a new loan, whose amount is variously estimated by the most modest at £16,000,000, by the more daring at £30,000,000.