WANT  OF  “  CONFIDENCE”  ITSELF  A  SYMPTOM  I  2  I

specialist.  The  words  in  which  J.  S.  Mill  suras  up  his
explanation  of  the  periods  when  “commodities  in  general
became  unsaleable,”  producing  a  temporary  condition  of
“  general  over-supply  ”  form  a  most  succinct  expression
of  the  fallacy.  “  The  essentials  of  the  doctrine  are
preserved  when  it  is  admitted  that  there  cannot  be  permanent ­
  excess  of  production  or  of  accumulation,  though
it  be  at  the  same  time  admitted  that  as  there  may  be  a
temporary  excess  of  any  one  article  considered  separately,
so  may  there  of  commodities  generally,  not  in  consequence ­
  of  over-production,  but  of  a  want  of  commercial
confidence.”  *
Here  we  have  the  explicit  explanation  of  a  purely  objective
phenomenon,  an  excess  of  unsaleable  articles,  by  reference
to  what  is  properly  and  primarily  a  purely  subjective
phenomenon,  want  of  confidence.  Want  of  commercial
confidence  can  no  more  be  a  cause  of  an  accumulation
of  unsaleable  goods  than  a  rise  in  the  thermometer  can
be  a  cause  of  sunshine.  Want  of  commercial  confidence
arises  from  the  collapse  of  some  businesses  through  inability
to  effect  sales  at  profitable  prices,  the  general  decline  of
business  profits  arising  from  low  prices,  and  a  general
lack  of  safe  and  profitable  fields  of  investment.  This
prevalence  of  low  prices  simply  registers  the  existence  of
an  excess  of  supply  over  quantity  demanded.  Want  of
confidence  then  is  nothing  but  a  subjective  interpretation
of  the  already  existing  fact  of  a  general  excess  of  forms
of  capital,  or  productive  power.  It  may  be  a  convenient
term  to  describe  the  attitude  of  mind  of  those  who  have
money  to  invest  and  who  refuse  to  place  it,  but  it  can

Unsettled  Questions  of  Political  Economy,”  p.  74.