industries abroad; while population, stimulated by a vicious poor law, was rapidly on the increase. In this last element, then considered as a sure sign of prosperity, really consisted one of the chief national dangers. So long as the war lasted, low as the rate of wages might be, there was generally employment enough in the fields or in the factories for nearly all the hands willing to labour. When the inflated war prices came to an end, and wheat fell below 80s. or even 70s. a quarter, until it reached 52s. 6d. early in 1816, labourers were turned off and wages cut down still further; bread was not proportionately cheapened, and agrarian outrages sprang up. The continent, impoverished by the war, no longer required British goods for military purposes, and, as its own domestic industries revived, ceased to absorb British products, flung in profusion on its markets. Hence came a reduction of 16 per cent. in the export trade, and of nearly 20 per cent. in the import trade, which resulted in bankruptcies and the dismissal of workpeople. If we add to these causes of distress, the influence of over-speculation, the accession of disbanded soldiers to the ranks of the unemployed, and the substitution of the factory system with machinery for domestic manufactures with hand labour, we can partly understand why Great Britain, never harried by invading armies, should have suffered more than France itself from popular misery and disaffection for several years after the restoration of peace. [Pageheading: _VANSITTART'S FINANCE._]