s. d. s. d. Singapore, from 105 0 to 60 0 Calcutta, 117 6 77 6 Hong Kong, 105 0 55 0 (last quotation from there) Bombay, 95 0 60 0 Ceylon, 95 0 70 0 Mauritius, 84 0 60 0 Callao, 95 0 63 0 Havannah, 85 0 47 6 Odessa, 95 0 42 6 Alexandria, 12 0 5 6 Cronstadt, 32 6 19 0 Quebec, 47 6 32 0 This decline of freights deeply concerns the agriculturist, since it unsettles even those loose and incorrect calculations, which were brought forward by the Free-traders for the purpose of proving that high freights must necessarily act as a powerful check to the importation of foreign corn, in the event of the abolition of the duties. The challenge so confidently made has been accepted in another quarter. At the great Wiltshire meeting held at Swindon on the 6th February, Mr George Frederick Young spoke as follows:— “Another point which has been taken as a kind of _cheval de bataille_—a sort of hobby-horse which the Ministers were determined to ride—I am somewhat familiarly acquainted with; I allude to the shipping interest. As they have brought that interest so prominently before parliament, I may, perhaps, be allowed to correct their statements when they are at fault. What were we told about the shipping interest in the House of Lords? I thought that they might have managed to get up returns, to answer the purpose of the occasion, of a somewhat specious character, extending over a large surface, before they asked the house to come to a conclusion. But what did they do? They said that the shipbuilding interest is in a most prosperous state; and that it is prosperous, they deduced from the fact that there were 90 ships building in the port of Sunderland on the 31st of December last. It is the truth that that was the case at that time, but it is not the whole truth; and the whole truth is, that though there were 90 ships building in that great shipbuilding port, 24 of them only were sold, whilst 66 were standing, 31 of them being ready to launch, but could not get purchasers. I find also, that out of 251 ships which were building at the several shipbuilding ports at that date, there were but 66 sold, making nearly 200 out of the 250 that could not obtain purchasers, (hear, hear.) Is that fair? (cries of ‘no,’ and cheers.) Is that the way in which a great public question is to be supported by the Ministers of the Crown? Yet these gentlemen have not thought it to be beneath them to stoop to such paltry prevarication for the purpose of misleading the parliament, (great