Another gentleman connected with an extensive firm in the grocery trade, gives still more discouraging accounts. The travellers of this firm extend their operations over the whole of the Midland Counties and the North of England. Their reports to their employers are most lugubrious. For example, one of them, a few weeks ago, remitted home £120, whereas his accounts due were about £1500. As to sales, these are most difficult to make. Consumption is gradually and rapidly declining. Retail dealers in the country towns complain that the farmers no longer expend the money they have been accustomed to do, when visiting markets; but confine their consumption of food more and more to the products raised upon their own lands. One of the travellers of this firm journeys through the counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland, in which for many years an extensive trade has been carried on in the curing of bacon and hams. This trade he represents as now almost extinct, or rapidly becoming so—the parties engaged in it being unable to compete with the importers of the low-priced hams and bacon of America. Of this class are the farmers of the country which owns Sir James Graham as their feudal lord, and of whom that distinguished statesman asserted, in the debate on the Address, that they must be in a state of plethoric prosperity, inasmuch as he had never had his rents better paid than at his last rent-day. The worthy baronet forgot to say that rent is the last debt that a tenant farmer will omit to pay, the landlord having a power which overrides the claims of all other creditors. If he could have added that his farmers’ tradesmen’s bills had been equally well paid, he would have imparted some information most gratifying to the community. Neither this house, nor any other that I have conversed with, can see any termination to the present declining state of things. It is becoming admitted, amongst the circles with which their travellers mix, that reductions of rent are wholly unequal to meet the emergency of the present crisis. It is proper that I should refer to one trade in Liverpool which is most prosperous—in fact, the only prosperous one. This is the trade of the merchants engaged in, and others connected with, the emigration of our fellow-countrymen, to seek a home in foreign lands. The following are the statistics of this trade, kindly furnished me by a gentleman officially connected with the shipping of emigrants from Liverpool:— Ships. Emigrants. Emigration in 1847 514 128,447 Do. 1848 519 124,522 Do. 1849 565 146,162 During the present year the emigration has been— January, 6943 Persons. February, 8779 „ March, 16,783 „ Cabin emigrants, 705 „