[146] Cf. e.g. _Capital_, vol. ii, pp. 430, 522, and 529. _SECTION TWO_ HISTORICAL EXPOSITION OF THE PROBLEM FIRST ROUND SISMONDI-MALTHUS _v._ SAY-RICARDO--MACCULLOCH _CHAPTER_ X SISMONDI'S THEORY OF REPRODUCTION The first grave doubts as to the divine character of the capitalist order came to bourgeois economists under the immediate impact of the first crises of 1815 and 1818-19 in England. Even then it had still been external circumstances which led up to these crises, and they appeared to be ephemeral. Napoleon's blockade of the Continent which for a time had cut off England from her European markets and had favoured a considerable development of home industries in some of the continental countries, was partly responsible; for the rest the material exhaustion of the Continent, owing to the long period of war, made for a smaller demand for English products than had been expected when the blockade was lifted. Still, these early crises were enough to reveal to the contemporary world the sinister aspects of this best of all social orders. Glutted markets, shops filled with goods nobody could buy, frequent bankruptcies--and on the other hand the glaring poverty of the toiling masses--for the first time all this starkly met the eyes of theorists who had preached the gospel of the beautiful harmonies of bourgeois _laissez-faire_ and had sung its praises in all keys. All contemporary trade reports, periodicals and travellers' notes told of the losses sustained by English merchants. In Italy, Germany, Russia, and Brazil, the English disposed of their commodity stocks at a loss of anything between 25 per cent and 33 1/3 per cent. People at the Cape of Good Hope in 1818 complained that all the shops were flooded with European goods offered at lower prices than in Europe and still unmarketable. From Calcutta there came similar complaints. From New Holland whole cargoes returned to England. In the United States, a contemporary traveller reports, 'there was no town nor hamlet from one end to the other of this immense and prosperous continent where the amount of commodities displayed for sale did not considerably exceed the means of the purchasers, although the vendors tried to attract custom by long-term credits, all sorts of facilities for payment, payment by instalments and acceptance of payment in kind'. At the same time, England was hearing the desperate outcry of her workers. The _Edinburgh Review_ of 1820[147] quotes an address by the Nottingham frame-work knitters which contained the following statements: