years without cotton. It is that which gives us our energy, our enterprise, our intelligence." The Natchez Free Trader, in copying an account of a great commercial meeting in Manchester, with reference to the growth of cotton in India, says (I copy it as it was read in Exe. ter Hall this last summer);

"It may be remembered that when Captain Baylis, of the British East India forces, came to this city in the early part of last summer for the purpose of getting men acquainted with the process of raising cotton, to accompany him to India, the Free Trader was the first journal to expose and denounce his plan as a dangerous scheme to undermine the prosperity of the American planters and ruin the sale of their great staple. In no measured terms of rebuke, the Free Trader denounced both those wealthy and influential planters in Adams county who lent themselves to aid Captain Baylis in his designs, and those nine young men from the states of Mississippi and Louisiana who sold them. selves to the ancient and inveterate enemy of their native land; but at that time the acting editor of that journal knew not the whole enor. mity of the insidious scheme, Little, perhaps, thought those young planters and overseers, when they consented to go to India, that they were to be used as tools in the unholy hands of the abolitionists! (Hear, hear

NTECHEZ FREE TRADER-EXTRACT.

45

"Of the startling fact, that the East India cotton-growing project is but a powerful organization designed to overthrow the system of domestic slavery in the American states, we have now the most ample evidence. This evidence we hasten to present to our readers; it is vitally important to the South, and merits all the deep attention which it will surely receive....

"The attitude of the South in sustaining the patriarchal institution of slavery at this moment is full of interest. England is arraying its vast moral, commercial, and political power against us. The ocean queen is about to work her thirty millions of white slaves and serfs in the jungles and on the plains of India, for the express purpose of rendering the labour of three millions of black slaves in America unproductive and of no value. This will be done. There is no vacillation or weakness of purpose in the English character. (Cheers.) All India will, in a year or two, teem like a vast beehive with the cotton enterprise, cheered on by the fratricide abolitionists and mock-philanthropists of the Northern States. Meanwhile, O'Connell, the Irish agitator, is invoked to agitate his countrymen against slavery on this side of the water, while, both in Ireland and England, his roaring voice is perpetually lifted up in abuse

of the noble-hearted, the independent, and the fearless Southern planters, as well as the American character at large. The Kirk of Scotland thunders her anathemas against the American Presbyterians, because they will not excommunicate slave-holding church members. The Wesleyans and the Quakers are perpetually using clerical influence against the rights and peace of our social institutions. The royal consort of the Queen of England is not ashamed to preside over the opening of a meeting vauntingly called the 'World's Convention,' the chief business of which was to abuse American institutions-where Birney, once a slaveholder, and the negro Remond, side by side on the same platform with the highest bishops of the Church of England, and with O'Connell, lifted up their voices, traitors as they are, against their own native land; all joining in full cry against a domestic institution which has come down unbroken from the 'world's gray fathers,' the holy patriarchs with whom angels walked and talked. (Laughter, and very loud cheers.)"

You will probably smile to see the heterogeneous mass of opinions and facts I have thrown together in this letter; but nothing will strike you more, I believe, than the singular phenómenon to which the enthusiastic editor of the Free Trader alludes. I do not believe that so

COALITION OF ALL PARTIES.

47

singular a coincidence ever occurred before as that we now witness in the union of English abolitionists and Liberals with their "old, inveterate enemy," the East India Company, the most benevolent philanthropists with the most selfish speculators, levellers with monopolists, and Chartists with the throne of Old England and her aristocracy, all mingling side by side in harmony and power to carry out a bold and grand design.

Says the London article before quoted, "The two subjects connected with India, which now engross the attention of the people of Britain, are of double character and opposite points. India wants from England justice and righteous protection, and a fair acknowledgment of her claims, as an integral part of the British empire. England wants from India raw materials for her manufactories, and the luxuries of coffee, sugar, and tobacco for her artisans and labourers; and, most of all, she wants an extensive market for her numerous wares and fabrics, which she can produce cheaper than any other country. These two different points of one great national question have now become the subjects of discussion by the philanthropists on the one side, and the merchants and manufacturers on the other. Both

are working for the attainment of their separate objects at different ends of the same chain. The one will civilize India by justice and religion, the other by unfettered commerce and an improved agriculture. Who would dare to say that these are things which the Southern people should pass by carelessly and heedlessly, and not prepare themselves to meet the coming change?"

One or two points more need a moment's attention. There is no probability that a long time will pass away before slavery will be abolished in British India. Many of all parties are already united for the subversion of the whole system; and the spirit of the British people is so deeply aroused, that the government will not dare refuse their bold demand.

It should not be forgotten by Americans that labour is cheaper in India than in any other portion of the world; and that man's wants in that mild climate are far more simple, and supplied at a far less expense than in the United States. It is a common saying, that "in India a labourer will work for a penny a day, and support himself." If this is not literally true, it is nearly so. A gentleman who had been a captain. in the service of the East India Company for thirteen years, assured me that the average price of labour throughout British India was