Note 188-4 — Chapter IV

Think only of the so-called commercial crises, the speculation-rage preceding which is excited by the lowness of the rate of interest, the destruction of capital in which makes the rate of interest to retrograde materially. However, this very decline is, in itself, only a spur to speculation in evidences of national indebtedness, stocks, etc., in commodities, only where, without such speculation, a rise in prices was to be expected. Thus, for instance, the great English periods of speculation: 1796 ff., in colonial products; 1808 ff., in raw materials in general; 1814, in articles of export, were times in which there was not the slightest facility in obtaining credit. (Tooke, History of Prices, III, 159.)