Such a situation seemed bound in the end to result in pressure by the manufacturers for governmental action to secure cotton.

That it did not immediately do so is explained by Arnold, whose dictum has been quite generally accepted, as follows: "The immediate result of the American war was, at this time, to relieve the English cotton trade, including the dealers in the raw material and the producers and dealers in manufactures, from a serious and impending difficulty.

They had in hand a stock of goods sufficient for the consumption of two-thirds of a year, therefore a rise in the price of the raw material and the partial closing of their establishments, with a curtailment of their working expenses, was obviously to their advantage.

But to make their success complete, this rise in the price of cotton was upon the largest stock ever collected in the country at this season.

To the cotton trade there came in these days an unlooked for accession of wealth, such as even it had never known before.