Crises supplied phenomena no less disquieting than the sufferings of the proletariat. In 1815 a first crisis shook the English market, throwing a number of workmen on to the street and resulting in riots and machine-breaking. It arose from an error of the English manufacturers, who during the war period had been forced to accumulate the stocks which they could not export, so that on the return of peace their supplies far exceeded the demands of the Continent. In 1818 a new commercial panic, followed by fresh riots, again paralysed the English market. In 1825 a third and more serious crisis, begot probably of the extensive credit given to the newly opened markets of South America, caused the failure of about seventy English provincial banks, bringing much ruin in its train, as well as a shock to several neighbouring countries. During the whole of the nineteenth century similar phenomena have recurred with striking regularity, involving ruin to ever-widening areas, as production on a large scale has extended its sway. No wonder some people were driven to inquire whether the economic system beneath all its superficial grandeur did not conceal some lurking flaw or whether these successive shocks were merely the ransom of industrial progress. Poverty and economic crises were the two new facts that attracted immediate attention in those countries where economic liberty had secured its earliest triumphs; and no longer could attention be diverted from them. Henceforth they were incessantly employed by writers of the most various schools as weapons against the new _régime_. In many minds they gradually engendered a want of confidence in the doctrines of Adam Smith. With some philanthropic and Christian writers they provoked sentimental indignation and aroused the vehement protest of humanity against an implacable industrialism which was the source of so much misery and ruin. With others, especially with the socialists, who pushed criticism to much greater lengths, even to an examination of the institution of private property itself, they resulted in a demand for the complete overthrow of society. All critics whatsoever rejected the idea of a spontaneous harmony between private and public interests as being incompatible with the circumstances which we have just mentioned.