GREAT BRITAIN, I 
BE 
237 
The break in the figures at that date is thus explained, and is 
shorn of the striking significance which it might be supposed to 
have. 
None the less the general trend of the figures for the middle 
years of the century indicates a change in the current of trade which 
in fact took place. Under the new and more accurate computation, 
imports not only exceeded exports at once, but continued to do so, 
and at an accelerating pace, as the years went on. It is probable 
that during the second quarter of the century the exports were 
greater than the actual imports; it is quite certain that thereafter 
the imports were greater than the exports. 
The excess of imports which developed during the second half 
of the century is easily explained, or at least easily interpreted. 
[t was the natural result of two circumstances. One was the 
stage which Great Britain had reached as an international lender, 
— the stage of maturity, so to speak. The process of making 
loans to foreigners had been going on for many years, and had been 
on a large scale from 1830 to 1850. Capital had been invested 
in the Continent of Europe, especially for railway construction, 
and it had been invested also over-seas, in North and South 
America. The American borrowings of all kinds were heavy 
after 1830; some of them with profitable result, others with 
disaster. Taking the operations as a whole, they had been remun- 
erative, and a growing stream of payments of interest and income 
was setting in toward the lending country. As has already been 
remarked, capital export in its early stages, when the remittances 
from the lending country are not yet offset by payments due from 
the borrowing country, causes the lending country to have an 
excess of merchandise exports. As time goes on, the growing 
remittances — of interest and profits by the borrowing country 
or countries — come to exceed the fresh loans that are made to 
them, and the lending country begins to have an excess of imports 
in place of the previous excess of exports. This may be called 
the stage of maturity, a stage which comes more quickly if the 
annual accretion of new loans precedes at a lessened rate, but is 
postponed if the process of lending, so far from slackening, goes