cheering.) But I will give you yet another instance, which is even more pregnant still. In the course of the debate on the Address in the House of Commons, Mr Labouchere made use of these words in reference to the shipping interest:—‘This was a subject in 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’—most unusual on the part of a Minister of the Crown—‘on the part of any mercantile man, or gentleman interested in shipping, 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, was in a state the most satisfactory and encouraging to those who did not believe that they were paralysing that important branch of industry by the measures of last session.’ I will not affect to conceal the part which I took upon reading these words. I viewed the statement with indignation. I knew that it was not a fact; and on Saturday morning, the instant I had seen it in the paper, I drew up this declaration, which was advertised in all the daily journals of London on Monday morning:— “‘We the undersigned shipowners and others connected with the building and equipment of ships in the port of London, having observed with much surprise that in the debate on the Address in the House of Commons on the 1st inst., the right hon. the President of the Board of Trade confidently stated, and ‘challenged contradiction on the part of any gentleman interested in shipping, that the whole business of the country connected with shipbuilding and shipowning was in a state the most satisfactory and encouraging,’ consider it a duty to declare our conviction that the statement of the right honourable gentleman must have proceeded from misinformation, and is entirely erroneous. We declare that the shipping interest is, on the contrary, at this moment in a state of great depression, no employment being obtained for British ships offering any reasonable prospect of remuneration for the capital embarked and the expenses to be incurred; that the accounts from all the great shipping ports of the world announce a superabundance of tonnage and extremely low rates of freight, rendering the prospect for the present year most discouraging, and that the various trades connected with shipping consequently and necessarily participate in the general depression; and we make this declaration without any party or political motive, and entirely without reference to the causes that have produced the depression we describe, in the desire alone that the legislature and the public should be truly informed as to the real facts of this important question, which appear to be misunderstood by her Majesty’s Government.’