fold 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