5 JANUARY 1850, Page 5

The annual winding-up of accounts in several sections of the

commercial world shows a manifestly prosperous state of affairs and a continued improvement. The exports and imports display a considerable increase ; in the woollen and cotton districts employ- ment is brisk, with rising prices and rising wag-es ; and even the Nottingham stockingers share the general rise. On the other hand, there is a lamentable default of any decisive proof that such im- provement has reached the farmers or the agricultural labourers ; and the Commissioners of the Morning Chronicle might be very usefully employed in ascertaining whether it has reached any of the poorest of the industrious classes. Much attention has been excited by an elaborate paper of statistics in Blackwood'sMagazine, exhibiting a generally decaying state of agriculture in Scotland, in the form of farmers' money-accounts void of profit or nearly. so. And Mr. Huxtable's recently-published pamphlet on prices, which should contain the opposite case, sets' forth rather What might be than what is done in retrieving agriculture.