The general commercial crisis which occurred in Europe about 
the Autumn of 1847, and lasted till the Spring of 1848, was 
ushered in by a panic in the London money market, beginning in 
the last days of April and reaching its climax on the 4th of May, 
1847. During these latter days all monetary transactions were 
brought to a complete stand-still; but from the 4th of. May the 
pressure subsided, and merchants and journalists congratulated 
one another on the merely accidental and transitory character of 
the panic. A few months later the commercial and industrial crisis 
burst forth, of which the monetary panic had been but the 
symptom and the forerunner. 

There is now a movement in the European money markets 
analogous to the panic of 1847. The analogy, however, is not 
complete. Instead of moving from west to east—from London via 
Paris to Berlin and Vienna—as did the panic of 1847, the present | 
panic is moving from east to west, with Germany for its starting 
point, thence spreading to Paris, and last reaching London. Then 
the panic assumed a local aspect from the slowness of its progress; 
now it appears at once in its universal character, from the rapidity 
of its extension. Then it lasted about a week or so; now it has 
lasted already three weeks. Then there were few who suspected it 
to be the forerunner of a general crisis; now nobody doubts it save 
those Englishmen who imagine themselves to make history by 
reading The Times newspaper. What the most far-sighted politi- 
cians feared then, was a repetition of the crisis of 1825 and 1836; 
what they now are sure of is an enlarged edition not only of the 
crisis of 1847 but also of the revolutions of 1848. 

The anxiety of the upper classes in Europe is as intense as their 
disappointment. Having had it all their own way since the middle 
of 1849, the war,* as yet, was the only cloud in their view of the 
social horizon. Now, after the war is over, or supposed to be over, 
they make the same discovery everywhere as was made by the 
English after the battle of Waterloo, and the peace of 1815, when 
the bulletins of battles were replaced by the reports on agricultural 
and industrial distress. With a view to save their property they did 
everything in their power to put down the Revolution, and to 
crush the masses. They are now discovering that they were 
themselves the instruments of a revolution in property greater 
than any contemplated by the revolutionists of 1848. A general 
bankruptcy is staring them in the face, which they know to be 
coincidental with the settlement-day of the great pawning shop at 
Paris; and as the English found, to their surprise, after 1815, 
when Castlereagh, “the man of the stern path of duty,” cut off his 
own head, that he had been a madman, so the stock-jobbing 
public of Europe already begin to ask themselves, even before his 
head is cut off, whether Bonaparte has ever been sane. They know 
that every market is over-imported; that every fraction of the 
proprietary classes, even those never before infected, has been 
drawn into the vortex of the speculative mania; that no European 
country has escaped from it; and that the demands of Govern- 
ments on their tax-paying people have been stretched to the last 
point. In 1848 the movements which more immediately produced 
the Revolution were of a merely political character, such as the 
reform banquets in France, the war of the Sonderbund in 
Switzerland, the debates of the United Diet at Berlin, the Spanish 
marriages, the Schleswig-Holstein quarrels,’*? &c.; and when its: 
soldiers, the workingmen of Paris, proclaimed the social character 
of the Revolution of 1848, its generals were as much taken by 
surprise as the rest of the world. Now, on the contrary, a social 
revolution is generally understood, even before the _ political 
revolution is proclaimed; and a social revolution brought about by. 
no underground plots of the secret societies among the working 
classes, but by the public contrivances of the Crédits Mobiliers of 
the ruling classes. Thus the anxiety of the upper classes in Europe 
is embittered by the conviction that their very victories over 
revolution have been but instrumental in providing the material 
conditions in 1857 for the ideal tendencies of 1848. The whole 
epoch from the middle of 1849 down to the present appears, 

then, as a mere respite given by history to Old European Society, 
in order to allow it a last condensed display of all its tendencies. In 
politics, adoration of the sword; in morals, general corruption and 
hypocritical return to exploded superstitions; in political economy, 
the mania of getting rich without the pains of producing—such 
have been the tendencies manifested by that Society during its 
counter-revolutionary orgies of 1849-56. 

On the other hand, if we place side by side the effect of this 
short monetary panic and the effect of Mazzinian and other 
proclamations, the whole history since 1849 of the delusions of the 
official revolutionists is at once deprived of its mysteries. They 
know nothing of the economical life of peoples, they know 
nothing of the real conditions of historical movement, and when 
the new revolution shall break out they will have a better right 
than Pilate to wash their hands* and protest that they are innocent 
of the blood shed. 

We have said that the present monetary panic in Europe made 
its appearance first in Germany, and this circumstance has been 
hit upon by the journals of Bonaparte to exculpate his régime 
from the suspicion of having had the least share in precipitating it. 

“Government,” says the Paris Constitutionnel, “has endeavored to moderate the 
spirit of enterprise even after the conclusion of peace, by adjourning several new 
concessions and by forbidding the introduction of new schemes on the Bourse. 
Unfortunately it could do no more; it could not prevent all excesses. Now, whence 
did they proceed? If a part was generated in the French market, it was certainly 
the smaller portiédn. Our railway companies, from a spirit of rivalry, were, perhaps, 
too hasty in issuing bonds, the proceeds of which were destined to extend the 
branch lines. But this would not have created embarrassment but for the mass of 
foreign enterprise suddenly sprung into life. Germany, above all, which had taken 
no part in the war, threw itself recklessly into schemes of all kinds. Not possessing 
sufficient resources itself, it appealed to ours, and as the official market was closed 
to it, our speculators opened to it the Coulisse. France, therefore, became the 
center of cosmopolitan projects which might enrich foreign countries at the 
expense of national interests. Capital became, in consequence, rare on our market, 
and our securities, meeting with fewer buyers, suffered that depreciation which, in 

Having given this specimen of imperial official nonsense on the 
causes of the European panic, we cannot withhold an example also 
of the sort of opposition tolerated under Bonaparte. 

“The existence of a crisis,” says the Assemblée Nationale, ‘“‘may be denied, but we 
cannot help thinking that prosperity is somewhat on the wane, when we consider 
the recent falling off in the receipts of our railways, in the amount of Bank 
advances on commercial bills, and in the duties on exportation levied during the 
first seven months of the year, which exhibit a decline of twenty-five millions of 
francs.” 

In Germany, then, all the active part of the middle classes have 
ever since the counter-revolution of 1849 devoted their energies to 
commercial and industrial enterprise, as the thinking part of the 
nation have abandoned philosophy for the natural sciences. The 
Germans, neutral in the war, have accumulated as much more 
capital as their French neighbors sank in the war. Finding them in 
this position, with a rapidly progressing industry and an accumula- 
tion of capital, the French Crédit Mobilier condescended to notice 
them as being fit subjects for its operations—the passive alliance 
between Bonaparte and Austria having already drawn its attention 
to the unexplored regions of Austria, Hungary and _Italy. 
However, having set the example and taken the initiative of 
speculation in Germany, the Crédit Mobilier itself was startled at 
the unexpected crop of stock-jobbing and credit institutions 
generated by its impulse. The Germans of 1855-56 received the 
swindle-constitutions of the French Crédits Mobiliers as dry-cut as 
the Germans of 1831 had received the political constitutions of 
France.’°* Thus, a Frenchman of the seventeenth century would 
behold with astonishment the Court of Louis XIV. reproduced a 
hundred-fold grander on the other side of the Rhine; and thus 
the Frenchmen of the last decennium were surprised to behold in 
Germany sixty-two national assemblies where they had with so 
much trouble produced one. Germany is not a land of decentral- 
ization after all; only centralization itself is decentralized, so that 
instead of one there exist a great many centers. Such a country, 
then, was quite fit to develop in the shortest time and in every 
direction the contrivances taught it by the Crédit Mobilier, just as 
Paris fashions are sooner circulated in Germany than in France. 
This is the immediate cause of the panic having made its first and 
most widely-spread appearance in Germany. We shall give the 
history of the panic itself, as well as its immediate causes, in a 
future article. 

Written on October 3, 1856 Reproduced from the newspaper 
Tribune, No. 4833, October 15, 1856