The next account shows the number and tonnage of registered sailing and steam vessels of the United Kingdom employed in the home and foreign trades respectively (_excluding repeated voyages_).[189] On this return it is to be observed that there has been a greater progress in the tonnage engaged in the foreign trade, where competition exists, than in the home trade, where, although that competition is also allowed by law, it is only carried out to a trifling extent in practice, the latter having only advanced from 719,815 to 860,406 tons, while the former has advanced from 2,089,037 to 3,168,105. It now remains to consider the shipping accounts for 1858.[190] These exhibited a decline as compared with those of the preceding years, and to this extent gave indications of the depression of which Shipowners so much complained. The accounts of December 1858 and January 1859,[191] if taken separately, showed that a favourable reaction had already commenced, and that British shipping was, in the spring of 1859, recovering from the depression it had suffered; and this fact was, naturally, much dwelt on by the champions of repeal, confirming, as it was supposed to do, the opinion expressed on the temporary and accidental character of this depression. This account, also, illustrates the state of the merchant shipping of England at a period preceding a continental war. [Sidenote: Foreign and Colonial trades.] It was pointed out with a certain degree of triumph, that these three accounts, when taken together, afforded satisfactory evidence that, down to the close of 1857, the progress of British shipping had suffered no check nor reverse, and that the great development of the foreign tonnage, employed in the trade of the United Kingdom during recent years, was only partly attributable to the repeal of the Navigation Laws in 1849, the progress of foreign shipping in British trade having been nearly as rapid in the period of eight years prior to 1850 in consequence of the increasing requirements of British commerce. The reason of the decline exhibited in the accounts for 1858 must, therefore, be sought from other causes; and, probably, the commercial history of the previous few years is amply sufficient to afford the required explanation; moreover, any loss we might, thereby, have sustained was more than counterbalanced by the extraordinary development of the foreign and colonial trades of the United Kingdom during the ten years preceding 1859.[192] [Sidenote: Probable causes of the depression in England and America.]