The commercial crisis, however, which occurred on both sides of the Atlantic, at the close of 1857, necessarily operated injuriously upon the progress of English trade, and consequently on English shipping. It must be also remembered that the Russian war, and, subsequently, the disturbances in British India, created a large and _abnormal_ demand for tonnage, which ceased with the termination of those temporary causes; and, as tonnage employed exclusively in the Government transport service, does not appear in the preceding account, it is probable that, during 1858, there was a still greater check to the demand for tonnage than is therein expressed. The temporary depression was, however, by no means confined to the shipping of the United Kingdom, as we have shown; similar symptoms had manifested themselves in other maritime countries.[193] [Sidenote: American jealousy and competition.] Although the competition of British shipping in steam navigation had been the subject of loud complaint in America, it will be found that the decline in the building and employment of British shipping in 1858 was not so great in proportion as that which was indicated by the annual accounts of the imports and exports of the United Kingdom for that year.[194] [Sidenote: Inconclusive reasoning of Board of Trade.] The Board of Trade argued, but very inconclusively, with reference to the free supply of foreign tonnage for the requirements of British trade, that if, during the exceptional circumstances of recent years, British commerce had been obliged to depend on British shipping alone to the extent which was necessary before 1850, an artificial stimulus would have been given to the demand for British ships, which could not have been sustained, and that, therefore, the whole weight of the reaction would have fallen upon British shipping, instead of being diffused, as was the case, among the whole tonnage employed in British trade.