steamers will have to pay war rates of insurance and to charge extra
freights. Steamers ready to leave foreign ports for this country will
wait for instructions and for news. On the outbreak of war, therefore,
this over-sea traffic must be greatly diminished in volume and carried
on with enormously increased difficulties. The supply of food would be
considerably reduced and the certainty of the arrival of any particular
cargo would have disappeared. The price of food must therefore rapidly
and greatly rise, and that alone would immediately impose very great
hardships on the whole of the working class, of which a considerable
part would be driven across the line which separates modern comfort from
the starvation margin. The diminution in the supply of the raw materials
of manufacture would be much greater and more immediate. Something like
half the manufacturers of Great Britain must close their works for want
of materials. But will the other half be able to carry on? Foreign
orders they cannot possibly execute, because there can be no certainty
of the delivery of the goods; and even if they could, the price at which
they could deliver them with a profit would be much higher than it is in
peace. For with a diminished supply the price of raw material must go
up, the cost of marine insurance must be added, together with the extra
wages necessary to enable the workmen to live with food at an enhanced
price.

Thus the effect of the greater difficulty of sea communication must be
to destroy the margin of profit which enables the British capitalist to
carry on his works, while the effect of all these causes taken together
on the credit system upon which our whole domestic economy reposes will
perhaps be understood by business men. Even if this state of things
should last only a few months, it certainly involves the transfer to
neutrals of all trade that is by possibility transferable. Foreign
countries will give their orders for cotton, woollen, and iron goods to