Owing to this extraor dinary system of doing business, in stances have occurred in which insurances have been paid on goods supposed, on the faith of the bills of lading, to be lost in one vessel, but which have subsequently arrived safely at their destination in another. It will be seen that the whole transaction, from be ginnii gto end, is based upon a lie. It arose years ago out of an innocent desire to ex pedite business, and was harmless so long as kept within its proper limits. When an English mail was leaving in the middle of. a shipment, bills of lading for the entire parcel were issued, to put the shippers in a position at once to secure their advances from the banks, and to enable the latter to remit the bills to their English representatives. Now, however, as we have shown, bills of lading, purporting to be receipts for certain mer chandise, are de facte nothing of the kind. They are shams, and all the complicated pro ceedings which follow are knowingly founded upon delusive documents. Our correspondent, “ A Member,” has pointed out that these bills of lading, upon which bankers make their advances, are, as legal securities, scarcely better than so much waste paper. As against the shipowner, the law treats them merely as receipts, liable to be opened by the evidence of real facts. If this evidence discloses that no such goods as those described were shipped, the bills, in re spect to the shipowner, become valueless. Against the shipmaster the law is somewhat more stringent, but even for him there are unnumbered loopholes for escape. Were there none, it is unnecessary for ns to point out how illusory would be that security which rested on the ability of an ordinary shipmaster to meet a heavy liability. With the legal aspect of the case, however, we are not desirous of dealing. It is from a moral point of view that we deem it chiefly worthy of public consideration. Commercial tran sactions based on a however tran sparent and open, must_ inevitably tend towards fraud and result in mischief. The system is essentially an indefensible one, and cannot fail to foster and encourage the over trading which the late president of the Chamber of Commerce deplored in his recent address. ,. 