With this redundancy of the paper
currency there arose in that country also a spirit of adventurous
speculation embracing the whole range of human enterprise. Aid was
profusely given to projected improvements; large investments were
made in foreign stocks and loans; credits for goods were granted with
unbounded liberality to merchants in foreign countries, and all the
means of acquiring and employing credit were put in active operation and
extended in their effects to every department of business and to every
quarter of the globe. The reaction was proportioned in its violence
to the extraordinary character of the events which preceded it. The
commercial community of Great Britain were subjected to the greatest
difficulties, and their debtors in this country were not only suddenly
deprived of accustomed and expected credits, but called upon for
payments which in the actual posture of things here could only be made
through a general pressure and at the most ruinous sacrifices.
In view of these facts it would seem impossible for sincere inquirers
after truth to resist the conviction that the causes of the revulsion
in both countries have been substantially the same.
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