The effects of the first ten years of the French war (1793 to 1802) were to all appearance rather good than bad. Britain itself, unlike the other belligerent countries, was always intact, and the labours of British manufacturers could go on as if nothing unusual was happening on the Continent. Our command of the sea, to say nothing of the conquest of new countries, gave us trade which others lost, and made amends for the annulment of the French treaty of commerce, and the loss of the Dutch trade. In 1806 the situation became less pleasant. The Berlin and Milan decrees excluding us from almost every country in Europe, the retaliatory Orders in Council and consequent alienation of America did real damage to English commerce. The very expectations they caused of a probable scarcity of particular goods sent up prices; and, with the real scarcity, contributed to an acute disturbance of trade, which lasted about five years for the Continent and three years more for America (1807–12, 1807–15). New markets were opened to us in South America; and the pent-up commercial enterprise of our countrymen vented itself in that direction, with wild disregard of the needs of consumers in that quarter.[640] The same happened, with more reason, in 1814 and 1815. When peace was restored, it was thought that the whole Continent must be eager to have our goods, after being so long without them; and we sent them lavishly everywhere without waiting for orders. Unhappily the rest of Europe was exhausted by the war, which had lessened their production; and such products as they could offer us in exchange for our manufactures we seldom took without taxing. The very food that we most wanted from them we were careful to keep out till the last moment.[641] Anything more unlike the “simple system of natural liberty” could not be conceived; and the result certainly seemed to be an over-production on our part;—it was at any rate a reign of low prices and deep commercial depression. This was not all. Since 1797 we had had a paper currency of uncertain value. In that year the Bank of England, whose department of issue was not then separated from its department of banking, gave advances to Government, in return for which it was relieved of immediate obligation to pay gold to the holders of its notes. As long as the issues were moderate, the notes kept their value; but this was a time when economical substitutes for the currency, cheques and bills and County notes, were lessening the proportion of the Bank’s notes to the total transactions of trade; and the Bank’s power of calculating the public need without the natural safety-valve of convertibility became more and more fallible; the circulation soon contained superfluous paper, which dragged down the whole currency. In these circumstances, discussions on currency gained an interest they could never have had in the abstract; and they led to measures of the most practical and permanent usefulness.