Lord Stanley made a speech in favour of Chambers of
Com- merce at Liverpool on Wednesday evening, and dropped remarks as to the virtual agreement of all parties on political questions on which we have commented elsewhere. For the rest he was in favour of chambers of commerce, and thought that in England they had not been fostered as they deserved, Of the forty-eight or forty-nine now existing, said Lord Stanley, only a few have taken a prominent position, and of these few he instanced the Manchester Chamber of Commerce as one. The Manchester and the Bradford Chambers of Commerce have both no doubt given the Government useful advice in its negotiations with France and other foreign Governments as to the practical details of the various recent commercial treaties, and it was in a great measure due to their influence that the reform of the Foreign Office, which intro- duced a special department to look after foreign commerce, was effected ; but the organization of most of the chambers of com- merce is still too much matter of accident to give their opinions any grave judicial importance on commercial affairs of magnitude.
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