for
Glasgow and Manchester manufactures, caused by the high price of those
articles in China, the importers would have had four-fifths of their
stocks left on hand.

Of the state of the public health in Singapore, I am able to report
most favourably. Let any one go there and see the European residents of
sixteen and twenty years' standing, and he will be able to judge for
himself. During an intimate acquaintance of eighteen years with this
part of the world, I have never known any endemic disease to prevail;
never heard of more than one European dying of cholera, or of more than
three Europeans being attacked with that disease; never knew but one or
two cases of liver-complaint in which the sufferers had not their own
imprudence to thank for the attack; and, as far as my memory serves me,
cannot reckon up two deaths among the European inhabitants in that long
period. Some one may here whisper, "Look at the state of your Singapore
burying-ground." My reply is, that it is filled by the death of numbers
who have, from time to time, arrived from Calcutta and other parts of
India in a dying state, and who would have died six months sooner, had
they not come to breathe the pure air of Singapore. On this point, I
boldly challenge contradiction.

As to the commercial prospects of this Island, I have some misgivings.
The recent establishment, by Her Majesty's Government, of the British
colony of Hong Kong, and the opening of the northern ports on the coast
of China, will, I fear, give its commerce a check: indeed, it seems
inevitable that it should suffer from these causes. When we consider
the vast importance of the Chinese junk-trade to Singapore, and take
into account the cheaper rate we can supply them, now their ports are
open, at their own doors, with every commodity they require from the
Malay islands, the risk, trouble, and expense they will save by
supplying their wants or disposing of their superfluities, in the
harbours of Shang Hae, Ningpo, Foo Chow, or Amoy, instead of undertaking
the long voyage to the Straits of Malacca for that purpose,--one is at a
loss to conceive on what grounds the sanguine expectation can rest, that
the opening of China will do Singapore no harm. Some of its merchants
evidently share in my anticipation, as they have completed arrangements
for forming establishments at Hong Kong, in order to avail themselves of
the change they expect to take place in the course of the trade. It will
not be