Mr. E. Baines, member for Leeds, on Thursday addressed to
the\ local Chamber of Commerce a speech very different from the last he uttered in Leeds. Instead of eulogizing all Peers, he talked for an hour most sensibly about the advance of British com- merce. He urged very strongly the suggestion first put for- ward at Bradford for charging some Minister specifically with the care of our commercial relations ; noticed a congress just held in Paris for the classification of sugars ; advised the registration of partnerships ; warned Leeds of the inevitable reaction in the wool manufacture ; thought that the country, apart from -the Govern- ment, was spending too fast ; believed there were too many joint- stock companies afloat, and trusted that a high rate of discount would serve to check or destroy a very great number of them. All periods of inflation followed, he said, upon periods of solid pros- perity, and this period of solid prosperity had lasted a very long while. Liverpool wants that warning even more than Leeds. People there seem to think that cotton is to remain for ever at four times its nominal price, and buy as if a fall were as infre- quent as an earthquake.
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