“He confidently appealed to every member of that house who had considered the subject, and, above all, to the representatives of the great shipping ports of this country, whether it was true to say that the industry of the dockyards had been paralysed by the measure of last session. On the contrary—and this was a subject on which he naturally felt the greatest interest, and which he had looked into with the utmost care—he had never made an assertion in that house with greater confidence, _and he challenged contradiction on the part of any mercantile man or gentleman interested in shipping_, than when he stated his belief that the industry of shipbuilding, that the confidence of the mercantile public in shipowning, that the whole business of the country connected with shipbuilding and shipowning, were in a state most satisfactory and most encouraging to those who did not believe that they were paralysing that important branch of industry by the measures of last session. He believed the fact to be that there were at least as many ships building at this moment as at any period within the last twenty years in this country.” In the face of such unqualified averments and challenges, on a point necessarily statistical, and in opposition to the President of the Board of Trade, who, from his official position, was the man of all others most likely to be furnished with full and accurate information, it would have been rash in any individual member to have hazarded a flat contradiction. But a question of such vital importance as this is sure to be thoroughly investigated; and we are indebted to that excellent paper, the _Shipping and Mercantile Gazette_, for an elaborate and complete refutation of the whole case so ostentatiously paraded by Government. Our contemporary, we are sure, will not quarrel with us if we transfer into our columns a good deal of the valuable information obtained by so much industry and perseverance, for which the thanks of the whole community are justly due. “We are prepared,” says the editor of the _Shipping and Mercantile Gazette_, in his leading article of the 31st January, “to prove that the depression in our shipping—in building as well as in freights—has not been so great for years as it is at the present time; in short, that it is _depression_, and not improvement, which is UNIVERSAL, with scarcely ‘the exception of a few ports.’ “With regard to shipbuilding, it is necessary to bear in mind that shipbuilders cannot stop their business all at once; they have yards on lease—materials on hand—and apprentices to maintain; therefore they must be doing a little at almost any risk.