It is the consciousness of this terrible calamity, impending over the nation, which terrifies all the directors of banks, and paralyses industry in so grievous a manner over the whole country. If you ask any moneyed man, what is the cause of the insecurity so universally complained of in money transactions over the country, and the reluctance of bankers to advance largely, even when their coffers are overflowing, to persons of the best credit? they will invariably answer, that they are afraid of a commercial crisis; that they do not know when it may come on: and that they must be, at all times, prepared for a storm. It is this indefinite dread, the natural result of the catastrophe of 1847, which renders them so cautious, and keeps the nation starved of accommodation, at the very time that Lombard Street is overflowing with money seeking for investment. It is no wonder they are afraid. The sword of Damocles is suspended over their heads, and thence their terror. They know that the heavy rains, and consequent importation of grain, in 1839 into the British islands, forced the Bank of England to apply for aid to the Bank of France, caused the United States Bank of America to stop payment, and rendered three-fourths of the traders in the United States bankrupt. The recollection of the dreadful crisis of 1847, brought on by the great importation of grain and exportation of sovereigns in that year, is fresh in their minds. They see the importations of food going on without intermission, in the face of exceedingly low prices, at the rate of _fifteen millions of quarters_ a-year, being nearly quadruple that of 1839, which was four million quarters.[23] They know that the grain countries will take our gold to any amount, but not our manufactures, because they do not want them, or are too poor to buy them; and they ask, How is all this grain to be paid? In what is all this to end? How are the bills, drawn to pay for these exports, to be met? So general is this feeling of dread, from the effects of a drain on our metallic resources to pay for the vast importations of grain going forward, that when the author, in the beginning of last autumn, said to the chief officer of one of the first banking establishments in Britain, that "three weeks' rain in August would render half the merchants in England bankrupt," he replied--"Sir, three weeks' rain in August will make half the merchants in Europe bankrupt." [23]