As for the situation in the Caribbean Sea, British newspapers had been reporting frequent riots there since last year. At this point, no one doubted that the war would lead to crop failure.
Well, rumors that were eight parts truth and two parts falsehood were always the hardest to dispel.
That very day, Earl Spencer published refutations in several of London's highest-circulation newspapers. But with matters like this, the more you insisted it was untrue, the more the public felt there was something wrong.
And there were always newspapers that liked to stand apart from the crowd, determined to sing a different tune from the government, greatly offsetting the refutations. Naturally, some of them were newspaper offices controlled by the United Irishmen Association.
Another week passed, and the rush to buy cane sugar in the United Kingdom only intensified. Some sugar shops, seeing brisk sales, even began secretly raising their prices.
This further confirmed the rumors.
Finally, under Petty's protest, Spencer had no choice but to impose a restriction: no one could buy more than two pounds of sugar per month.
What he had not expected was that this restriction made people even more certain that cane sugar would soon be in severe shortage—if there were no shortage, why would the government limit purchases? The restriction could only restrain ordinary people, however. Those with means could still get their hands on sugar.
For example, by buying directly from the London Futures Exchange.
Even the upper ranks of British society believed that cane sugar would skyrocket in price within a short time.
With British capital entering the market, Petty had no choice but to increase the amount of cane sugar released each day to around 9,000 dan.
Yet under his firm short-selling, sugar prices continued falling, reaching 1 shilling 5 pence