It is, of course, an acknowledged principle, that an increased import of foreign commodities, to be a profitable one, must be attended by increased means of consuming in the importing country, and be balanced ultimately by increased exports, at paying prices to the producer. The question, then, so far as the mercantile body is concerned, is simply this,--Have the transactions of the past year been satisfactory to that body, or not? I do not hesitate to say in reply, that, with the solitary exception of the year 1847--if indeed it be an exception--there has been no such disastrous epoch in the annals of British commerce for the past quarter of a century as the year 1851. If the year 1847 was more disastrous, it was because it was one of monetary revulsion, of potato rot, and of the collapse of absurd railway speculation. During the past year we have had nothing of this kind to encounter. We entered upon 1851 with prognostications, all but unanimous, of a coming year of prosperous business. During the course of the year we had neither civil commotion nor foreign embroilment to trouble the even tenor of our way. Yet we have closed the year with the mercantile and trading interests of Great Britain poorer than they commenced it, by, I am satisfied, at least _twenty millions sterling and upwards_. During the whole of the past year, the reports of our commercial circulars have told an unvarying tale of declining prices and unprofitable imports. Scarcely a single foreign product has remunerated the merchant, or even realised the cost at which it was purchased abroad; and stocks of all kinds, not only in our seaports, but in every retailer's shop or warehouse throughout the country, have been every week deteriorating in saleable value. In no single commodity of importance has the consumption kept pace with the increase of importations; and had we at any period of the year been visited with monetary difficulty, had the Bank of England not been full of specie, and anxious to extend its accommodation to the public, the losses upon our accumulation of stocks would have been sufficient to prostrate one-half of the mercantile community.