For many years past Hamburg, Bremen Antwerp and Rotterdam have been drawing to themselves a large portion of the shipping trate which seeks a market for goods and is not merely concerned with the transit of goods already sold. How far this process might have continued to the detriment of London is a matter of opinion. The experts, as usual, were—divided into two classes, the croakers and the optimists, each armed—with masses of statistics proving contra-dietary contentions. One effect of the war has been to make the future of London in this particular respect pretty certain, The closing of Continental ports has driven to the Thames a great number of cargoes which would ordinarily have gone elsewhere and there can be little doubt that the consequence permanent increase in organs may be suffering wrest—whetter is searcely likely that mandates will succeed where acts of Parliament have failed.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.