"It is well known how numerously mining and other joint-stock companies sprung up, and how successful they were for some time in catching and turning to account the disposition for hazardous adventure which now pervaded the nation. The operators on the share market made the new schemes the basis for an enormous extent of gambling. Many persons, quite removed from all connexion with business—retired officers, widows, and single women of small fortune—risked their incomes or their savings in every species of desperate enterprize. The competition and scramble for premiums in concerns which ought never to have been but at a discount, were perfectly astounding to those who took no part in such transactions. These operations in shares had an effect like that of speculations in goods, in adding to the mass of the circulation of paper and of credit; and this, be it still kept in mind, concurrently with the addition which had been made to the Bank of England issues.
"It is not possible to compute, with even any approach to accuracy, the amount of the addition to the total of the circulating medium by these united causes; but if I were called upon to hazard an estimate, I should conjecture that the whole amount of the circulating medium, including the transactions on credit without the intervention of paper, must have been, on the average of the four months ending April, 1825, little if at all short of fifty per cent. above what it had been in the corresponding period of 1823. The approximation of this estimate to the truth is rendered probable by the consideration that, upon the principles which determine money prices and nominal values, such a general rise of prices, amounting in some instances to above 100 per cent., without even the allegation of any general scarcity, could not have taken place without an immense expansion of the circulating medium."
Tooke's Considerations of the State of the Currency, 1826, p. 47.
[THE FRENCH OCCUPATION OF SPAIN (1826).]
Source.—Martineau's History of the Peace, Vol. I. pp. 406-408. Bohn's Libraries. G. Bell & Sons.
It having been objected that the balance of dignity and honour among nations had been affected by the French occupation of Spain, which was thought to have exalted France and lowered England, Mr. Canning replied: "I must beg leave to say that I dissent from that averment. The House knows—the country knows—that when the French army was on the point of entering Spain, his Majesty's Government did all in their power to prevent it; that we resisted it by all means short of war. I have just now stated some of the reasons why we did not think the entry of that army into Spain a sufficient ground for war; but there was, in addition to those which I have stated, this peculiar reason, that whatever effect a war commenced upon the mere ground of the entry of a French army into Spain, might have, it probably would not have had the effect of getting that army out of Spain. In a war against France at that time as at any other, you might perhaps have acquired military glory; you might, perhaps, have extended your colonial possessions; you might even have achieved, at a great cost of blood and treasure, an honourable peace; but as to getting the French out of Spain, that would have been the one object which you almost certainly would not have accomplished. How seldom, in the whole history of the wars of Europe, has any war between two great powers ended in the obtaining of the exact, the identical object for which the war was begun! Besides, sir, I confess I think that the effects of the French occupation of Spain have been infinitely exaggerated. I do not blame those exaggerations, because I am aware that they are to be attributed to the recollections of some of the best times of our history; that they are the echoes of sentiments which, in the days of William and Anne, animated the debates and dictated the votes of the British Parliament. No peace was in those days thought safe for this country while the crown of Spain continued on the head of Bourbon; but were not the apprehensions of those days greatly overstated? Has the power of Spain swallowed up the power of maritime England? Or does England still remain, after the lapse of more than a century, during which the crown of Spain has been worn by a Bourbon, niched in the nook of that same Spain—Gibraltar?... Again, sir, is the Spain of the present day the Spain ... whose puissance was expected to shake England from her sphere? No, sir, it was quite another Spain; it was the Spain within the limits of whose empire the sun never set; it was Spain "with the Indies" that excited the jealousies, and alarmed the imaginations of our ancestors. But then, sir, the balance of power! The entry of the French army into Spain disturbed that balance, and we ought to have gone to war to restore it! I have already said that when the French army entered Spain, we might, if we chose, have resisted or resented that measure by war. But were there no other means than war for restoring the balance of power? Is the balance of power a fixed and unalterable standard? or is it not a standard perpetually varying, as civilisation advances, and as new nations spring up, and take their place among established political communities? The balance of power, a century and a half ago, was to be adjusted between France and Spain, the Netherlands, Austria and England. Some years afterwards, Russia assumed her high station in European politics. Some years after that again, Prussia became, not only a substantive, but a preponderating monarchy. Thus, while the balance of power continued in principle the same, the means of adjusting it became more varied and enlarged. They became enlarged in proportion to the increased number of considerable states—in proportion, I may say, to the number of weights which might be shifted into the one or the other scale. To look to the policy of Europe, in the time of William and Anne, for the purpose of regulating the balance of power in Europe at the present day, is to disregard the progress of events, and to confuse dates and facts which throw a reciprocal light upon each other. It would be disingenuous, indeed, not to admit, that the entry of the French army into Spain was, in a certain sense, a disparagement—an affront to the pride—a blow to the feelings of England; and it can hardly be supposed that the government did not sympathise, on that occasion, with the feelings of the people. But I deny that, questionable or censurable as the act might be, it was one which necessarily called for our direct and hostile opposition. Was nothing then to be done? Was there no other mode of resistance than by a direct attack upon France; or by a war to be undertaken on the soil of Spain? What if the possession of Spain might be rendered harmless in rival hands—harmless as regarded us—and valueless to the possessors? Might not compensation for disparagement be obtained and the policy of our ancestors vindicated, by means better adapted to the present time? If France occupied Spain, was it necessary, in order to avoid the consequences of that occupation, that we should blockade Cadiz? No. I looked another way. I sought materials of compensation in another hemisphere. Contemplating Spain, such as our ancestors had known her, I resolved that if France had Spain, it should not be Spain 'with the Indies.' I called the New World into existence, to redress the balance of the Old."