"The aggregate inward entries during the ten months ended the 5th of November 1849, were 5,081,592 tons, of which 3,651,589 were British, and 1,430,003 foreign. During the corresponding ten months ending the 5th of November of the present year, the aggregate entries are 5,114,064 tons, the British being 3,365,033, and the foreign 1,749,031. Thus, comparing the first ten months after the repeal of the Navigation Laws with the corresponding ten months of the preceding year, when those laws were in operation, we find that British tonnage _has decreased within this brief period no less than 286,556, or 8-1/10 per cent, while foreign tonnage has increased to the enormous extent of 319,028 tons_, or 22-3/10 per cent, the whole entries having advanced only 32,472 tons--thus showing that our maritime commerce has not been augmented in any appreciable degree by the alteration, but that it has simply changed hands. The foreigner has taken what we have madly surrendered. I may add, that never was the state, and never were the prospects, of shipowners so gloomy. Freights in all parts of the world are unprecedentedly low, and, for the first time within my recollection, ships are actually returning from the British West Indies in ballast. "Could I regard the whole subject with less of humiliating apprehension for my country, I might derive satisfaction from the confirmation of many predictions on which I have formerly ventured, afforded by an analysis of the return from which the melancholy result I have exhibited is taken. Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Prussia, and Germany--countries whose rivalry you have repeatedly derided as undeserving of attention--have increased in the ten months from 502,454 tons to 796,200 tons, or 58-4/10 per cent. But I forbear. While all Europe bristles with bayonets, the loom and the spindle seem to be regarded as the chosen defences of this now the most unwarlike nation on the face of the earth. Wellington, and Ellesmere, and Napier have in vain essayed to arouse England to solicitude for her national defences; and till some imminently impending alarm shall awaken my countrymen to a sense of the insecurity in which they are unconsciously reposing, I almost dread they will accept the unworthy advice recently tendered to them by the unadorned oracle of Free Trade, to run every risk rather than incur any expense. It is thus that, under the illusory expectation of the most infinitesimally minute reduction in the freight of imported commodities, the hazard of leaving our navy unmanned is overlooked or disregarded."