panics occurred for eighty years.

But, as I have shown in a note attached to this Introduction, a new
tariff or a general change of duties is apt to precipitate a panic, on
account of the unsettling of business, and that the consequent shaking
of credit adds its quota to the forces finally culminating in a panic
cannot be doubted. As a matter of history with us, substantially new
tariffs have always happened to be the immediate forerunners of a panic,
and this I believe to be true in the case of other countries.

Why is this? Is it not because the people instinctively turn to
tinkering at and changing their chief tax--the tariff--whenever they as
a whole need financial relief; and have we not shown that such relief is
needed almost every ten years, when the overtrading, inseparable from
the development of all thriving communities has made the call for credit
impossible to grant?

A new tariff may defer, or hurry, or, occurring simultaneously, will
intensify a panic, but it may not hope to avert one when due: yet if its
changes be very gradual, fixed and long predicted, and of a nature to
bring about or confirm a judicious tariff for revenue only, they will
materially help to put business on so firm and sound a basis that
recovery from the inevitable, and approximately decennial panics, will
be wonderfully expedited. Thus a new tariff is a quite accurate
forewarning of a panic, and is also to no inconsiderable extent a
contributory cause. (See foot-note on page 5, _seq., Interrelations of
Panics, Tariffs, and the Condition of Agriculture_, etc.; and
especially what is said of the panic of 1848, on page 10.)

M. Juglar has fully analyzed the three phases of our business life into