THE WAR AND FLUCTUATIONS IN MARITIME INTERCOURSE 669 
with steady growth. The progress which occurred was the A.D. 1776 
outcome of a series of violent reactions; the alternations of anh 
periods of peace and war were continually affecting the con- id A 
ditions under which maritime intercourse could be carried on, facturing 
and business of every kind was highly speculative. That yalutivn 
large fortunes were made is true enough; but it is also true 
that, in such a state of affairs, all attempts to provide steady id tends) 
employment for the operatives, at regular wages, were doomed operatives’ 
bo failure, and the standard of life could not but be lowered. ji ¥ 
The minor fluctuations in the cloth trade, in the early part of 
the seventeenth century, had taxed the abilities of the ad- 
ministration, but the expansion and contraction, at the end 
of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century, 
were on a very much larger scale, and affected a far greater 
number of industries. It would be impossible to follow out 
these ramifications in detail ; we can only attempt to indicate 
the general effects which the wars of this period had, in 
interrupting, or diverting English commerce, and inducing 
financial disaster. 
[t does not appear that the immediate effects of the rupture The breach 
with the United States in 1776, were very much felt by the dmerican 
commercial community, or the industrial population. The colonists 
market for our manufactures there was closed; but there 
must have been an increased demand for the equipment of 
our armies. There was probably some difficulty about naval 
stores; but so long as supplies could be obtained from 
Canada, and from the Baltic, this can hardly have been 
serious. The mischief of the revolt only came home to 
Englishmen as the country was embroiled in incidental 
disputes with one after another of the European countries. 
The French were only too delighted to see the break-up of 
English power in America, and were ready to foment the 
quarrel. They were jealous of the magnificent maritime 
resources which had been revealed to the world, when the 
influence of Chatham was exerted on English policy; they 
feared that the French West Indies* would be swallowed up by 
the British monster, as Canada had been; and some of them 
anticipated that the rise of an independent state in the New 
1 Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century, Iv. 39.