Again, the revolutions in Europe in 1848, of which so much has been said to account for the distress, are equally inadequate to explain the phenomenon. They could, of course, affect the European market for our export goods only; and they, taken altogether, only amount, to the countries affected by the revolutions, to £13,000,000--little more than a fourth part of our exports, which vary from £51,000,000 to £60,000,000. Supposing a half of this export, or £7,000,000, had been lost, during the year 1848, by the French, German, and Italian revolutions; what is that amidst the mass, thirty-fold greater, of our total manufactures, which some years ago were estimated at £133,000,000 for the home market, and £50,000,000 for the foreign. They are now unquestionably above £200,000,000 annually. But let it be supposed that the _whole_ defalcation of our exports, from £60,000,000 in 1845, to £53,000,000 in 1848, was owing to the European revolutions, and none at all to the paralysis of domestic industry by the effects of free trade and a fettered currency--seven millions deficit, out of £200,000,000 annual produce of manufactures, is only a _twenty-ninth_ part. Is it possible that so trifling a deficit can have been the cause of the terrible calamity which overtook the country in 1848 and 1849, the more especially as the harvest of 1847 was so good, that, by orders of government, a public thanksgiving was returned for it? That calamity was unparalleled in point of extent, and has, in two years, swept away at least one half of the whole commercial and manufacturing wealth of the kingdom. The thing is perfectly ridiculous. The failure of an eighth part of our annual export, and a twenty-ninth part of our annual creation of manufactures, might occasion considerable distress in the particular places or branches of manufacture principally affected, but it could never explain the universal paralysis, affecting the home trade even more than the foreign, which followed the monetary crisis of October 1847.