profitable trades, and _caeteris paribus_ and in comparison empty of
those drawn in the less profitable. If the iron trade ceases to be
as profitable as usual, less iron is sold; the fewer the sales the
fewer the bills; and in consequence the number of iron bills in
Lombard street is diminished. On the other hand, if in consequence
of a bad harvest the corn trade becomes on a sudden profitable,
immediately 'corn bills' are created in great numbers, and if good
are discounted in Lombard Street. Thus English capital runs as
surely and instantly where it is most wanted, and where there is
most to be made of it, as water runs to find its level.

This efficient and instantly-ready organisation gives us an enormous
advantage in competition with less advanced countries--less advanced,
that is, in this particular respect of credit. In a new trade
English capital is instantly at the disposal of persons capable of
understanding the new opportunities and of making good use of them.
In countries where there is little money to lend, and where that
little is lent tardily and reluctantly, enterprising traders are
long kept back, because they cannot at once borrow the capital,
without which skill and knowledge are useless. All sudden trades
come to England, and in so doing often disappoint both rational
probability and the predictions of philosophers. The Suez Canal is a
curious case of this. All predicted that the canal would undo what
the discovery of the passage to India round the Cape effected.
Before that all Oriental trade went to ports in the South of Europe,
and was thence diffused through Europe. That London and Liverpool
should be centres of East Indian commerce is a geographical anomaly,
which the Suez Canal, it was said, would rectify. 'The Greeks,' said
M. de Tocqueville, 'the Styrians, the Italians, the Dalmatians, and
the Sicilians, are the people who will use the Canal if any use it.'