A HUNDRED YEARS AGO

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 2261, 22 September 1914, Page 6

A HUNDRED YEARS AGO

THE LAST GENERAL WAR EFFECT ON TRADE It has been commonly said that it is nearly a century since Europe lias been confronted with such a collision of hostile States, ma -ch of belligerent armies, and manoeuvres of hostile fleets, as has suddenly been brought upon the scene in the past ten days. The statement is entirely true. No parallel for this war, in scope of operations or number of combatants involved—seven States have their armies in the field.already— has been presented since the war which began on May 20, .-1803, between Franco and England,. which virtually lasted twelve years, and in -which every Government of Europe was eventually engaged. In view of what'has happened this week, in the finance and trade of the:civilised! world, a little retrospect is timely. ' Both: financially and commercially those were days of small'things, 'compared'with now. War had, moreover, been so familiar to Europe, even before 1803, that ocean commerce was already more or less of a gamble. But there were some highly interesting events in those directions, i nevertheless . When Napoleon Attacked England. British consols dropped from 73 to 50 during the first months of the war in 1803.' . Holland, an ally of France, at once placed an embargo on all. British commerce, and an immensely lucrativo trade stopped short.. From Continental ports like Hamburg, England at once recalled her merchant ships. .The Italian.: Republic, then under Napoleon's domination, ordered that, goods and deposit credits ,in that country, belonging to English merchants, should be s«zed to provide a fund from which Italian merchants • could be recompensed for goods of their own detained in England.' ■*-:.'"'".'. The immediate result of all.this was that Great Britain's export trade fell from £45.000,000 for 1802 to £36,000,000 for 1803. But it cut both ways; a letter from Paris, dated August, 1803, declared that ."from our seaports we continue to. hear of nothing out captures, loss,.'and.failures;'-of total stagnation in trade'and great scarcity of money." To those who have been concerned recently, as to how the tourists in. Europe would 1 get home, it is interesting to recall,what occurred to them in .May. 1803.-.'There had been a year and a.half of. peace, and Englishmen, curious to see France under the now regime, had been thronging into that country. Napoleon ordered all of these English tourists—estimated as numbering ten thousand—to be seized toidJ'kept in prison. Some of them did. sot: emerge until 1814.

The Merchants of 1803. Prices of commodities did not rise on the outbreak of that war;' they fell, because of the blockade of the markets, and rose only when the Bank of England suspended specie payments and issued new banknotes' not secured, in gold; and when the European- harvests failed'in"lßo4, until well ori'm'tho war, there was no such thing as drafts on foreign exchange. • A merchant shin carried in its own strong box the gold for the business of its voyage, and usually three or four of such vessels would l>e escorted-by a man-of-war. These were tho* rich prizes of the ocean warfare. -England, being tho wealthiest nation, even then, financed its long war by huge issues of-British Consols at 6 pAr cent.. Napoleon began by scllino; LouisiT ana to tho United States for 16,000,000 • dols.; he persuaded Portugal to pay lam 16,000,000 francs per annum on. condition of keeping her out of the area of warfare, and he assessed Spain, Italy,, and Holland heavily. As other European nations joined in the fight against France, England began to provide the money for the poorer European States to arm. . i ■'■ • ■ . '■■ It made- theso remittances to the Continent in a. curious way. By 1800, nearly one-third of England's, trade was wjth the neutral United States. American merchants bought more than taey sold in England, and sold more than tbey-bought-on tho Continent. They arranged with London to moot their English debit balanres by turning over to "English agents on the Continent their credit balances at Continental markets,, and witli these Great Britain paid its subsidies.

In the Great • When this was stopped, first by Na-' poleon's decreo of 1806, declaring all commercial intercourse with, British Islands contraband of war, then by England's retort, in kind, and then, by our Non-Intercourse Act, the trade situation: became deplorable. ■ But the Continent steadily insiste'd on getting British goods. When Napoleon him-, self entered Russia in 1812, his army was largely fitted out with shirts and shoes from. England. ' One enterprising merchant used 500 horses in hauling overland, from the Gulf of Finland ,to France itself, English merchandise landed in Russian territory. Tho cost of the transportation was said to ' be fifty' times tho • regular ocean freight i'rom London to Calcutta. Under all these conditions, the price of gold in London rose from 80 shillings per ounce, in the period 1803-6 (the mine prico being 77.10J), to 91 in 1809, to 105 in 1812. and to 110 in 1813.

It may be asked what were the great commercial results, after all was over I 1 Years of complete prostration for tho European Continent, which had been .ravaged- by tho armies, was one. Great oxpansion of England's commerce, when it had driven tho French navy from tho seas, was another. But the third was the'rise of the neutral United States as one of tho great commercial arid maritime Powers of the world, with a sea trado which it had never, possessed before, and which it never lost until our own Civil War. These are interesting precedents to recall, even in tho present vastly altered trade and commerce.—"New York Evening Post."

A week before the war a Gorman professor, Horr Balled, of Berlin, published a study~of the question of German food supply in time of war. JTho results he arrives at," says the "Lco'ndmist," "are completely pessimistic-. 'The country in "tho case of a general European war would almost certainly havo all its coast blockaded. Most of the corn supplies coming in over Holland and Belgium are carried in English ships, and would stop at once. Austria would have more than enough to do to feed itself, while, in view of the political changes of the last.few years, there is not much hope of receiving supplies from Rumania. Thrown back on its own resources, Germany would last out, ho thinks, a far shorter time than is generally calculated, 6inco even its present production of foodstuffs would'be restricted owing to the withdrawal of men to the front." In qualification of this opinion it must be stated that the general belief is that Germany could, in war. herself produce almost I all the food that sho needs.

The New Zealand Loan and Mercantile Agency Co., Ltd., have received instructions form Mr. Koberts of llangaroa, to I sell the whole of his dairy stock, consisting of 56 milking cows, by public aucLtioa ojo, .Wednesday, September. 30.