“1. The lenders are not willing, provisionally, to enter upon new schemes.
“2. The borrowers, weary or feeble, are incapable of giving birth to new illusions.
“3. The monetary crisis has added its action to these two negative elements.
“So that to-day, after proper deliberation, people decide to do nothing; or, at least, to do nothing under the former conditions of international enterprises.”
But is it admissible that we shall do nothing henceforth, and that the present situation will prolong itself indefinitely? No, assuredly; and, so far as this goes, M. De Laveleye recognizes with every one that the stagnation of business cannot endure, that a reaction is inevitable, and that it will come in its time.
“But,” he hastens to add, “this return to activity will not be produced at all in the form known and hoped for by those who have seen the revivals of speculation after the crises of 1837, 1857, and 1866; and this for the logical reason that the industrial, commercial, financial, and speculative activity of the middle of this century has had for its base and aim the economical furnishing of the world (l’outillage économique du monde), and that this furnishing is very nearly completed.
“The base and the object of the former activity will no longer exist, or scarcely so. We must, then, wait for a profound modification in the form and conditions of this activity.
“This is why we have called the present crisis a permanent, a final crisis”—une crise définitive.
He goes on to give his reasons for this idea, that the economical furnishing of the world is finished, or so far advanced that henceforth we can expect no such development as we have seen in the past:
“In Holland the great works are done: the drains are continued; Amsterdam is connected with the sea; international communications are established.