ety; and it would perhaps be difficult to point
out any marks by which they may be accurately distinguished.

When, however, such distress immediately accompanies a change from war
to peace, our knowledge of the existence of such a cause will make it
reasonable to believe, that the funds for the maintenance of labour have
rather been diverted from their usual channel than materially impaired,
and that after temporary suffering, the nation will again advance in
prosperity. It must be remembered too that the retrograde condition is
always an unnatural state of society. Man from youth grows to manhood,
then decays, and dies; but this is not the progress of nations. When
arrived to a state of the greatest vigour, their further advance may
indeed be arrested, but their natural tendency is to continue for ages,
to sustain undiminished their wealth, and their population.

In rich and powerful countries where large capitals are invested in
machinery, more distress will be experienced from a revulsion in trade,
than in poorer countries where there is proportionally a much smaller
amount of fixed, and a much larger amount of circulating capital, and
where consequently more work is done by the labour of men. It is not so
difficult to withdraw a circulating as a fixed capital, from any
employment in which it may be engaged. It is often impossible to divert
the machinery which may have been erected for one manufacture, to the
purposes of another; but the clothing, the food, and the lodging of the
labourer in one employment may be devoted to the support of the labourer
in another, or the same labourer may receive the same food, clothing,
and lodging, whilst his employment is changed. This, however, is an evil
to which a rich nation must submit; and it would not be more reasonable
to complain of it, than it would be in a rich merchant to lament that
his ship was exposed to the dangers of the sea, whilst his poor
neighbour's cottage was safe from all such hazard.

From contingencies of this kind, though in an inferior degree, even
agriculture is not exempted. War, which in a commercial country,
interrupts the commerce of states, frequently prevents the exportation
of corn from countries where it can be produced with little cost, to
others not so favourably situated. Under such circumstances an unusual
quantity of capital is drawn to agriculture, and the country which
before imported becomes independent of foreign aid. At the terminati