letter, many a reader has said to himself, or, if reading aloud, said to his hearer, "All this looks like truth, perhaps ; but the author of this book ought to know that England never will adopt a policy, which would deprive her of a customer who takes her manufactured goods, to the amount of twelve millions sterling every year. If England will not buy our cotton, she is more presumptuous even than usual in supposing that we shall purchase her manufactures."

It would impoverish England, without doubt, to lose so valuable a customer, if she could not find another. But losses are not always impoverishment; and in this case they will cer tainly be gains. If England loses seventeen million customers in America, she gains one hundred and fifty million in India. At the present time, the entire consumption of English manufactures in India is only a halfpenny a month for each individual; Jamaica consumes £5 a head, annually; Trinidad, £7; Cape Colony, £7; Australia, £10; India and NewYork a shilling a year! Let the present plans of England be carried out, (and England is very

VOL. II.

F

apt to accomplish what she sets herself about in earnest), and, at the moderate computation of 24s. a head (only one sixth as much as negroes just liberated in Trinidad consume), and you have the annual consumption in India of £180,000,000 of British manufactures.

One more item will close what I have to

say about India. The planter (if he ever reads this book), will say, "Well, suppose we do emancipate our negroes? If what you have said be true, I am a ruined man! For although slavery is an expensive system, yet, with freelabour, we cannot compete with cotton raised by labourers, forced to work for sixpence a day or starve !" I say, in reply, you are not a ruined man, though you should liberate your slaves; you would expect, of course, to receive compensation for them when given up; and no law, I admit, could justly demand their release without a fair compensation; and the moment you perform so wise, humane, and generous an act, you will find, by experience, the superior economy of free over slave labour. For when your labourer is free, he is an expense to you only twelve hours a day; and he will do

the same work as a freeman, for less money than he costs you now. And, during nights, rainy days, Sundays, holidays, sick-days, childhooddays, and worn-out and dying days, he is at his own expense, and not yours. And I say farther, as long as you are a high-minded and enterprizing American, who has no cannots or impossibilities in his vocabulary, you can compete with an Englishman, or any other man, who works for a quarter of the money that you will pay your affectionate freeman, attached, as he would be, to your person. Yes, as long as you have not Americans themselves for rivals, you can raise your cotton, and freight your ships with the great staple for Liverpool or the Continental ports, or, better than all, you can manufacture it yourselves, or bring it to the North, and we will engage to assist you. Or the wide world is open for you. Go, with the fruit of your honest enterprize, to any home of the great brotherhood of man, and God go with you. You are his freemen.

Besides, in any event, England must be dependant upon you for some time to come; do what she will, she cannot consummate her

East India project in one year. At present, you supply her with your two great staples, cotton and tobacco. And your ingenuity, your skill, your free labour, your easier access, by some 9000 miles, to Liverpool, and, above all, your unconquered and unconquerable Anglo-American spirit, will still give you the advantage. Give America but a fair open market, and England dreads her more than any other competitor. But continue your present system, and I fear you will gaze on the conflict, and see your spoil divided among the strong!

With great respect, I am sir,

Your obedient servant,

C. EDWARDS LESTER.

Utica, September 10, 1841,

DEAR

In this letter I propose calling your attention for a short time to the origin, growth, and abuse of British power in the possessions of the East India Company. I shall only contemplate the subject in some of its bearings, and particularly as it is connected with the question of slavery, in those vast and populous regions. The facts which have been brought to light by parliamentary investigating committees, by the testimony of distinguished men who have resided in the East, and, more recently, by the antislavery convention assembled in London, leave no doubt, on the minds of candid men who have examined the matter, that slavery not only exists to an enormous extent, but, in its most odious forms, in British India; and that the act of West India emancipation by no means exonerates the English Government from the charge of sanctioning this system.

Two hundred and forty years ago, Elizabeth granted to a company of London merchants an exclusive right to the commerce of India,