ENGLISH TRADE IN JULY.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1775, 28 October 1879, Page 3

ENGLISH TRADE IN JULY.

The Board of Trade returns for the month of July, just issued, are of a far less discouraging character than might have been anticipated in presence of the continued depression in trade, the bad weather, and the adverse "results shown in the preceding month. The figures seem to point to the fact that the incipient revival in trade exhibited in May, and apparently crushed in June, was not altogether of a fictitious character, and that, bad as the times are, there is a quiet undergrowth of improvement going forward in some quarters. The total value of British and Irish exports for the past month is i 316,608,622, against £16,400,857 in July last year, or an increase of l:'f per cent. -comparison last month showed a decrease of 3J per cent. Tor July, 1877, the exports were £17,587,301, compared with which the present shows a falling off of 5V percent. The total imports figure at £30,186,072, compared with £35,881,814 in July, 1878, or a decline of 15J. Last month the decline shown was only 3 per cent. ■Compared with 1877, when the total imported was £36,150,820, there is a decrease of 16J per cent. Comparing the figures for July with those for the first six months of the present year the percentages are again more hopeful. Thus the aggregate exports for the half-year ending June last showed a decrease of 6 per cent., whereas for July alone there is an increase of li per cent. In the imports the decline for the single month is 15*i- per cent., and for the half year only 10 per cent. ISTo doubt diminished imports can be construed into declining trade, but under present circumstances, with markets overstocked, the fact may bo perhaps taken as rather favourable than otherwise, especially when it is accompanied by augmented exports in such articles as iron, steel, silk, linen goods, &c. The markets require readjustment, and a working off of excessive supplies is always a healthy process. Moreover, it should be borne in mind that much of the existing diminution in imports is attributable to a reduction in the articles of luxury. The only decidedly adverse movement disclosed in the present returns is the large importation of corn. The quantity of wheat imorted is 21 per cent, more than in July, 1878, and the value has at the same time risen 16 per cent.