slave States of America for prosperity and continuance; secondly, that if a war should at any time break out between England and America, a general insurrection take place among the slaves, disease sweep off those slaves by death, or the cotton crop fall short in quantity, whether from severe frosts, disease of the plant, or other possible causes, our mills would be stopped for want of cotton, employers would be ruined, and famine would stalk abroad among the hundreds and thousands of workpeople who are at present fortunately well employed.

"Calculate the consequences for yourself. Imagine a dearth of cotton, and you may picture the horrors of such a calamity from the scenes you may possibly have witnessed when the mills have only run on 'short time.' Count up all the trades that are kept going out of the wages of the working classes, independent of builders, mechanics, engineers, colliers, &c., employed by the millowners. Railways would cease to pay, and our ships would lie rotting in their ports, should a scarcity of the raw material for manufacture overtake us."

It is not an inconsistency, therefore, that while we see only cause of congratulation in this wonderful increase of trade, Lord Brougham sees in it the exaggeration of an evil he never ceases to deplore.

We, and such as we, who are content to look upon society as Providence allows it to exist-to mend it when we can, but not to distress ourselves immoderately for evils which are not of our creation we see only the free and intelligent English families who thrive upon the wages which these cotton bales produce. Lord Brougham sees only the black labourers who, on the other side of the Atlantic, pick the cotton pods in slavery. Lord Brougham deplores that in this tremendous importation of a thousand millions of pounds of cotton, the lion's share of the profit goes to the United States, and has been produced by slave labour. Instead of twenty-three millions, the United States now send us eight hundred and thirty millions, and this is all cultivated by slaves. It is very sad that this should be so, but we do not see our way to a remedy. There seems to be rather a chance of its becoming worse. If France, who is already moving onwards in a restless, purblind state, should open her eyes wide; should give herself fair play by accepting our coals, iron, and machinery; and under the stimulus of a wholesome competition, should take to manufacturing upon a large scale, then these three millions will not be enough. France will be competing with us in the foreign cotton markets, stimulating still further the produce

of Georgia and South Carolina. The jump which the consumption of cotton in England has just made is but a single leap, which may be repeated indefinitely. There are a thousand millions of mankind upon the globe, all of whom can be most comfortably clad in cotton. Every year new tribes and nations are added to the category of cotton wearers. There is every reason to believe that the supply of this universal necessity will for many years yet to come fail to keep pace with the demand; and, in the interest of that large class of our countrymen to whom cotton is bread, we must continue to hope that the United States will be able to supply us in years to come with twice as much as we bought of them in years past.

The

We know very well that the possibility of growing cotton is not confined to the New World. plains of Bengal grew cotton before Columbus was born, and we, with our mechanical advantages, can actually afford to take the Bengal cotton from the growers, and send it back to them in yarns and pieces cheaper than they can make it up. So, also, thousands of square miles in China are covered by the cotton plant; and some day we may, perhaps, repeat the same process there. Africa, too, promises us cotton. Dr. Livingstone found a country in

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which the growth was indigenous, and where the chiefs were very anxious to be taught how to cultivate it for a European market. There is no lack of lands and climate where cotton could be produced. It is said of gold that no substance in nature is more widely diffused, and more omnipresent; but, unfortunately, it is diffused under conditions which make it seldom possible to win it with a profit. So it is of cotton. The conditions under which it becomes available for our markets are not often present in the wild cotton which our travellers discover, nor are they to be immediately supplied. Remember the efforts which the French have made to produce cotton in Algeria, the enormous prizes they offered, the prices at which they bought up all the produce, the care with which fabrics were prepared from these cottons at Rouen, and exhibited at the Paris exhibition, and then note the miserable result after so many years of artificial protection. It will come eventually; as the cotton wants of the world press heavily and more heavily, it must come. We shall have cotton from India, from China, and from Africa; we would advocate every means within reasonable limits to quicken the development. We would not even ask whether to introduce cotton culture upon a large scale into Africa would be

to secure that African cotton would not be raised by slave labour.

A great deal has been said of the preponderance of population, manufacturing energy, and even agricultural wealth in the North over the South, and we are prepared to admit much; but when it is used as an argument for coercing their neighbours into a change of policy repugnant to their habits, ruinous to their prosperity, and more than doubtful from the experience of other lands, it behoves us to look narrowly into the grounds of such assumed superiority. Hay is one of the great sources of national wealth, which has been prominently put forward as being of more value than all the cotton grown South. Let us look into it.

The object of making hay is to cure the grass so that it can be transported to cover, and feed cattle through those rigorous northern winters, which prevent the cattle from seeking their own food in its natural state. Where those winters do not exist that necessity does not arise, but the cattle have not the less food. The making of hay is then not a valuable labour, but an expense in the keeping of cattle imposed by climate. Accordingly we find, as we proceed south, the winters being shorter, less hay is made in proportion to the number of cattle