grudgingly paid her millions every year for American cotton, and she is now determined to do it no longer. The government will afford all the facilities and encouragement possible, for the growth of cotton and of all the tropical products in her eastern possessions : her army and navy, legislation and credit, will all contribute their aid to this work. The East India Company, under their present charter, no longer enjoys that exclusive control of Indian commerce, which has enriched its proprietors in past times; and the sagacious and experienced men who control its affairs, after having carefully investigated the whole subject, have come to the conclusion turn their domains into cotton plantations, and divert into their own coffers the £7,000,000 that now flow annually into the pockets of the planters of the South. The Manchester Chamber of Commerce (an association of opulent manufacturers whose power is almost unlimited) have joined warmly in the enterprise, and will extend all the favour they can, without too great a sacrifice of interest, to the designs of the Company. The favour will be returned; for it is understood, that the Company will do all in their power to open a market for the Manchester fabrics among the 150 millions of India. With the keen sighted policy, which they have uniformly displayed in the management of their affairs, the Company despatched Captain Baylis, an efficient and well-qualified commissioner, to the Southern States, in the spring of 1840, to engage twelve American planters, who were perfectly acquainted with the cotton culture, to go out to India in the service of the Company, for the purpose of carrying out their designs. In this he was successful, and returned to England with his agents, who carried with them several of the most improved cotton-gins (which had never been introduced into India), and a large quantity of the best kinds of seed. The gins were set up in Liverpool while I was in that city; and parcels of India cotton, which had been imported in the seed, were submitted to the working of these machines. The result was, that while the American gin could clean 1400 pounds a day to the great improvement of the raw material, the Indian machine (churka), with three labourers to work it, could only turn off 40 pounds. Several commercial gentlemen assured me, that the cotton was as fine as any specimens from America in the market; and yet it cost the importers less than half the price. It should be remembered, too, that it had been grown under the agriculture of semi-barbarians; had perhaps been carried 600 miles on the backs of bullocks, aud transported 12000 miles, with the additional expense in freight, of being brought in the seed. As might be expected, this fact excited a deep interest among the manufacturing capitalists of England, and private speculators were soon on the alert. Prospects of making fortunes by the cultivation of cotton in India induced several opulent men immediately to embark for that country; and large bribes, I had occasion to know, were offered by a speculator to one of Captain Baylis's agents if he would enter into his employment; which, of course, the American refused. The India mail, during the last summer, brought intelligence that this corps had reached their destination, and made a commencement upon 1000 acres of land in the fertile district of Tinnevelly, with every prospect of success. The account also stated that arrangements were being made by the Company's servants for extending their scale of operations as widely as possible; and that large tracts of land had been purchased by private individuals for the same purpose. "Indeed," says an English correspondent of mine, in a recent letter, " India seems to be visited with a sort of cotton mania, not unlike your multicaulis fever.” " I have recently received intelligence from India," says Thomas Clarkson, in a late pamphlet, "that individuals are hiring large tracts of land from the East India Company, principally for the cultivation of cotton. One person has taken 60,000 acres at his own risk, and expects to employ one hundred thousand people more than at present!" Brother Jonathan, who is generally on the ground when the bell rings for dinner, hoping to find the cultivation of cotton " a pretty good sort of a business," has also taken up some " small patches" of a few thousand acres; and a number of Americans, resident merchants in India, have thrown commerce aside for the more profitable business of planting cotton. The whole body of British abolitionists have entered cordially into the measure, believing that the success of the scheme will be the death-knell of American slavery. They have but one great object now before them-the abolition of slavery in India ; and they believe that the general cultivation of cotton in those countries will have a tendency to overthrow slavery in America, by rendering it impossible for slave labour (acknowledged to be more expensive) to compete with the freegrown products of the British empire. The English abolitionists feel that every shilling which goes out of Great Britain for cotton, or any other slave-grown product, goes into the pocket of the slaveholder, and thereby contributes to uphold the system. This feeling is becoming almost universal in England among men of all parties; and all who take any particular interest in the slavery question are labouring with a zeal they never manifested before, in advancing the interests of cotton planting in India; and while I believe that many of them are influenced by higher mo |