The Express.
London, England, 1854-01-05 00:00:00

RIDE AND AND LEATHER TRADE.
The favourable course of this trade during the past year is
thus commented on by Messrs. T. J. and T. Powell Ita
presenting to your notice our Annual New Year's Circular,
with the customary statistics of the past and previous yeese.
we have meek pleasure in being able to reseed the byes&
able position in whisk the leather trade bee bees pissed,
by the salarged demands which have masted threughest
the year, and the remunerative prices which have eons,-
ptently ensued. Ti. tables of comparative prices will be
foaled, we believe, more interesting than usual, as the
alterations in the value of leather and hides have been far
more extended and much more varied than usual. Our
Table No. 1 will skew that the advance of prises we had
to notice at the dose of the year 1852, continued an almost
uniform progress during the year now just expired, until
the month of September ; when having acquired, perhaps
in some articles a too accelerated speed, they received •
cheek, not only by the alteration in the value of money
which occurred just at that period, but also, and chiefly, by
the news of a superabundance of goods having been shipped
to Australia ; and as there can be no doubt that the de-
mand from that remote region had been the chief stimulant
to the advance of prices, it was to be expected that the
cessation of orders from that country of gold, should iu
some degree have lowered the value of leather, but as the
more recent news, thence, brings accounts of increased
seems in the mitring operations, it is not too much
to believe the check to be merely temporary. And this con-
sideration has already had :la effect on some of the ankles
more prominently required for that distant market, in anti-
cipatory sales to • considerable extent, stptearly the highest
prices they had attained in the month of September. There
is another consideration which points to a buoyancy in
prices ; that Is, the small Stocks, generally, on hand, which
is ease of emergency would be found inadequate to the
demand. In leer last year's annual circular we alluded to
the increased prosperity of the industrial classes—the great
mweemers of leather—as one of the causes of the advanced
we believe we may still calculate upon their con-
tent snit
prosperity, notwithstanding that in some localities
peat theonteat has been manifested, because wages did
not rim is proportion to the increased prices of food. Thees
wiferbanase eitions will, however, no doubt soon be
allayed by senesesions on either aide; the fact of the opera.
fives in these cases being able so loi.g to withstand their
DISARM exhibits their previous prosperity. There is another
contingency which assist be taken into consideration, the
possibility of a European war, and its requirements from
this department of trade. If our country should be in-
volved in war, and its duration be long, prices must inevita-
bly rise ; but we cannot but hope SO great an evil may be
yet averted, or be speedily terminated. Our foreign
export trod* in leather, independently of that to
the colonies, has not been so large as daring the
preceding year, partionlariy in that to the United States.
Our higher prices, with the still high import duties at
most of the foreign ports, will account for this. Symptoms,
however, of a relaxation are exhibited in various countries,
foretelling a gradual perception of the advantages which
must accrue to every government which, regardless of class
interests, permits its merchants to purchase whatever they
require—of any other nation—wherever they may find it—
on the cheapest terms. This problem, so simple and just—
when rot viewed through the medium of private interest,
was never more fully exemplified than in its effects on the
leather trade is this country. When free trade was first
approached by Sir Robert Peel, those who were engaged in
leather, of every class, deprecated its introduction, believ-
ing that their interests would be destroyed. But the po
sition whieh this branch of 411 r manufactures now occupies,
even without that reciprocity which is so desirable for all
the world, has plated those who are engaged therein, manu-
facturers, as well as merchants and traders, in a far better
position than when they were under protective duties:
while the whole of the community of England has been
benefited by the manufactures of leather introduced from
the continent of Europe, from India, Australia, and the
United States."