been met with the same depressing competition. There is not, in fact, a country on the surface of the globe to which a ship could be sent, in cargo or in ballast, with any certainty of earning a return freight which would pay even ordinary expenses of wages and port-dues--necessary repairs being out of the question. In the attempt, which I propose to make, to form an estimate of the losses sustained upon shipping during the past year, it must be borne in mind that the year 1850, with which I shall have to compare it, was notoriously one of severe suffering to all parties interested in shipping. We had then begun to feel the effects of the ruinous policy upon which we had embarked; and the amount of loss sustained in that year had been previously unparalleled in the annals of our commerce. There was a decline, for example, of the rates current in 1848, of the extent of which the following figures, taken from the June number of _Blackwood_, furnishes a correct idea. The figures in question, I may remark, were based upon actual transactions:-- Calcutta, March 1848, Jute, £5 5 0 December 1850, £3 5 0 " " " Sugar, 7 0 0 " " 3 0 0 and £3 5 0 Bombay, March 1848, Rice, 3 5 0 May 1850, 1 12 6 Valparaiso, Oct. " Copper, 4 0 0 March 1851, 3 7 6 Other freights bore a similar ratio of decrease. During the past and present year we have had sugar brought from Calcutta at as low as 30s. per ton, and cotton from Bombay at £2, 5s. From China we have had tea as low as 40s.; whereas, in 1850, "The Oriental," American clipper, got £6 per ton, an ordinary British ship being able to command about £4. From the west coast of America we have lately had guano brought to this country for as low as 30s. to 40s. per ton. In March last the freight actually realised was £3, 12s. per ton. These, however, it will be said, are extreme cases. I give, therefore, a more general statement, although it is almost impossible to arrive at a fixed rate of freights for any portion of our long-voyage trade. Throughout the whole of our Eastern ports, and of China, as well as in the ports of the west coast of America, the rates have depended, as they did in 1850, upon the number of American vessels arriving in ballast from round Cape Horn in search of freight, after having earned a very ample remuneration from their previous voyage from the Atlantic ports of the United States--a voyage in the benefits of which British shipping is not allowed to participate;--and these have been most arbitrary and uncertain in amount. As a rule, I find that I may safely put down the long-voyage freights, both from the East and West, as having fallen 30 per cent during the past twelve months. This is the case even with regular traders; and with transient ships it is much more. With respect to Mediterranean and other European freights, the reduction is over 10 per cent for British vessels. In Canadian timber freights there has been an