tives, yet I do not doubt that feelings of hostility against the interests of the South are mingled with their efforts. Mr. Gladstone, a church-extension, antiWest-India-emancipation, high-tory, dearbread-loving declaimer, thus spoke in Parliament (30th of March, 1838,) "If the facts were thoroughly investigated, it could be shown that the British manufacturers were actually the most effectual encouragers, not only of slavery, but of the slave-trade itself. By what means was the slave-trade with the Brazils carried on? By British manufactures, directly imported from this country. The British manufacturer sent his cotton goods to the Brazils; these were immediately shipped off from the Brazils to the coast of Africa, and were there exchanged for human ware, which the Brazilian trader brought back." (Hear, hear.) "You," said the honorable gentleman, "who are so sick with the apprenticeship in the West Indies; you, who cannot wait for twenty-four months, when the apprentices will be free, are you aware what responsibility lies upon every one of you at this moment, with reference to the cultivation of cotton in America? There are three millions of slaves in America. America does not talk of abolition, nor of the amelioration of slavery. It is a domestic institution, which appears destined to descend to the posterity of that free prople: and who are responsible for this enormous growth of what appears to be eternal slavery? Is it not the demand that creates the supply? and is it not the consumption of cotton from whence that demand arises? You consume 318,000,000 pounds of cotton which proceed from slave labour annually, and only 45,000,000 pounds which proceed from free labour; and that, too, while you have the means in India, at a very little expense, of obtaining all you require from free labour. An American writer, in his communication published in London, observed, " I hope the planters of our Southern States may not be afraid to be heard above their voices in asking themselves, 'What are we to do? Can we meet this supposed change! Is it right, or politic, or profitable to continue the wasteful system of slave labour any longer?' The an swer of every candid man who inquires into the subject is, you cannot go on exhausting whole tracts of fertile land by this plan; moving farther West every few years, and the original plantations falling back into an unreclaimed wilderness (which is the operation at the South,) without ruining yourselves and the country also. "I believe it can be safely asserted that, with the present costly system of slave labour at the South, the planters will not be able to stand so many chances against them. If we have been able to produce the same article with a rich soil and ingenious machinery, it does not stand to reason that other countries with the same soil (Dr. Roxburgh says, ' he never saw or heard of an Indian farmer manuring in the smallest degree a rice field; yet these fields have probably for thousands of years continued to yield annually a large crop of rice of an average of thirty to sixty fold-even eighty or one hundred have been known,') and cheaper labour, because free, may not take advantage of our improvements, and, backed by a wealthy company, and encouraged by a powerful government, be able to defy our competition. It is not possible; it is against the very nature of our present system." The South have considered this matter; at least, they are now beginning to see the tendency of these movements in the East. The "Cotton Circular," an able paper, put forth by a convention of planters in South Carolina, not long ago, remarks that "The slave-holding race could not maintain their liberty or independence for five 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 Exeter 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 themselves to the ancient and inveterate enemy of their native land; but at that time the acting editor of that journal knew not the whole enormity 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! "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 4 |