any use it." But, on the contrary, the main use of the Canal has been by the English.[1] None of the nations named by Tocqueville had the capital, or a tithe of it, ready to build the large screw steamers which alone can use the Canal profitably. Ultimately these plausible predictions may or may not be right, but as yet they have been quite wrong, not because England has rich people—there are wealthy people in all countries—but because she possesses an unequalled fund of floating money, which will help in a moment any merchant who sees a great prospect of new profit.
And not only does this unconscious "organisation of capital," to use a continental phrase, make the English specially quick in comparison with their neighbours on the continent at seizing on novel mercantile opportunities, but it makes them likely also to retain any trade on which they have once regularly fastened. Mr. Macculloch, following Ricardo, used to teach that all old nations had a special aptitude for trades in which much capital is required. The interest of capital having been reduced in such countries, he argued, by the necessity of continually resorting to inferior soils, they can
- ↑ Note to 12th edition. In 1905, merchant steamships with a total tonnage of 9,398,374 tons passed through the Canal, and of these 7,224,181 tons were British. Germany, however, came first with mail-steamers, which were returned at 1,013,645 tons, against 705,890 tons British. The total net tonnage of all ships using the Canal was 13,134,105 tons, out of which 8,356,940 were British.
