We shall eventually return to the influence of the quantity of available
 money on the rate of interest. But it is to be noted right here that Overstone
 again makes a quid pro quo. The demand for money-capital in 1847
 (before October there was no anxiety over money stringency, or the "quantity of
 money," as he called it) increased for various reasons, such as rising prices
 for corn and cotton, lack of buyers of sugar due to over-production, railway
 speculation and the crash, overcrowding of foreign markets with cotton goods,
 and the forced export to, and import from, India for the purpose of speculation
 in bills of exchange, which was described above. All these things,
 over-production in industry and underproduction in agriculture — in other
 words, greatly differing causes — gave rise to an increased demand for
 money-capital, i.e., for credit and money. The increased demand for
 money-capital had its origin in the course of the productive process itself.
 But whatever may have been the cause, it was the demand for
 money-capital which made the interest rate, the value of
 money-capital, climb. If Overstone means to say that the value of money-capital
 rose because it rose, then it is tautology. But if, by "value of
 capital," he means a rise in the rate of profit as the cause of the rise in the
 rate of interest, we shall immediately see that this is wrong. The demand for
 money-capital, and consequently the "value of capital," may rise even though
 the profit may decrease; as soon as the relative supply of money-capital
 shrinks, its "value" increases. What Overstone wished to prove is that the
 crisis of 1847, and the attendant high interest rate, had nothing to do with
 the "quantity of money," i.e., with the regulations of the Bank Act of
 1844 which he had inspired; although it was, indeed, connected with them,
 inasmuch as the fear of exhausting the bank reserve — a creation of
 Overstone — contributed a money panic to the crisis of 1847-48. But this
 is not the issue here. There was a dearth of money-capital, caused by the
 excessive volume of operations compared to the available means and precipitated
 by the disturbance in the reproduction process due to a crop failure,
 over-investment in railways, over-production, particularly of cotton goods,
 swindling operations in trade with India and China, speculation, superfluous
 sugar imports, etc. What the people, who had bought corn at 120 shillings per
 quarter, lacked when it fell to 60 shillings, were the 60 shillings which they
 had overpaid and the corresponding credit for that amount in Lombard Street
 advances on the corn. It was by no means a lack of bank-notes that prevented
 them from converting their corn into money at its old price of 120 shillings.
 The same applied to those who had imported an excess of sugar, which became
 almost unsaleable. It applied likewise to the gentlemen who had tied up their
 floating capital in railways and relied on credit to replace it in their
 "legitimate" business. To Overstone all this signifies a "moral sense of the
 enhanced value of his money." But this enhanced value of money-capital
 corresponded directly on the other hand to the depreciated money-value of real
 capital (commodity-capital and productive capital). The value of capital in the
 one form rose because the value of capital in the other fell. Overstone,
 however, seeks to identify these two values of different sorts of capital in a
 single value of capital in general, and he tries to do so by opposing both of
 them to a scarcity of the medium of circulation, of available money. But the
 same amount of money-capital may be loaned with very different quantities of
 the circulation medium.