“I will tell you the result. That declaration was advertised to lie at the London Tavern on Monday, Tuesday, and to-day; and upon the very first day it received the signatures of several hundreds of the most eminent men connected with this branch of our national industry, and from among whom I will undertake to say I can pick out twelve names of men who are owners of not less than 100,000 tons of British shipping (cheers.) That the President of the Board of Trade should venture to make such a statement, and challenge contradiction from any one, is, I think, most extraordinary. Is it not calculated to produce this effect—that statements made by the Ministers of the Crown, with whatever confidence, will be received with a little doubt and distrust, and that though they come even from so upright and honourable a man as Mr Labouchere, it will be necessary to substantiate them by something better than mere assertions of belief?” We are sorry that Mr Labouchere should have committed himself so far. His personal character is beyond suspicion; and we do nothing more than express the universal feeling of his political opponents when we say, that no one will prefer against him the charge of having made a wilful misrepresentation of this nature. But it is the curse of men high in office, that they are surrounded by subordinates, whose share of honourable scruple is of the most convenient elasticity, and who sometimes have a substantial interest in the verification of their hazarded opinions. To this kind of influence Mr Labouchere is peculiarly subjected. The returns on which he founded, with so rash a confidence, had evidently passed through the hands of some veteran statist and figure-monger, and been adapted to suit an immediate purpose, rather than to conform to the actual truth. On no other hypothesis can we account for so strange a perversion of fact; for we believe that, after the evidence cited above, no man, whatever may be his political opinions, will hold that the commerce of the nation is not materially depressed, instead of being, as Ministers represented it, flourishing beyond all precedent. We next come to the manufacturing interest, which assuredly ought to be in a most prosperous condition. In the course of the bygone year, tranquillity was restored on the Continent, and the interrupted markets were opened with every prospect of a fair demand. Notwithstanding the fall of prices, it might have been supposed that agricultural depression had hardly time to react upon the home market; and food was cheaper than perhaps it has been in Britain within the memory of man. Yet, with all these advantages, it is by no means certain that our manufactures are in a sound condition. The official tables indeed exhibit a large increase of exports, but these tables are quite useless as exponents of actual value. No later than last session, Sir Robert Peel gave a decided testimony on this point.