INTRODUCTION. DURING the past two years, we imported from the United States the following quantities of their great staple, COTTON : 1858. 7,439,623 cwts. 1859. 8,586,672 cwts. From all other sources, during the same periods, the amounts were as follow:: 1858. 1,795,575 cwts. 1859. 2,359,659 cwts. We are thus mainly dependent upon the United States for the raw material of England's greatest manufacture. Cotton is king in commerce, and commerce and manufactures have placed Great Britain where she is. Stop her cotton supply, and you hurl her from her rank amidst the nations. THAT SUPPLY, SO FAR AS IT DEPENDS UPON THE UNITED STATES, IS NOW IN PERIL. If a question arise in any part of Europe or Asia, involving the conquest or annexation of some petty principality, Great Britain immediately becomes vitally interested. Debate follows upon debate in Parliament, and our press seems to have room for nought but extravagant amplification of the subject. Territories far distant, barren, and thinly peopled, are invested with ridiculous importance, whereas that immense Republic beyond the Atlantic is a sealed book to us, although the source, mainstay, and support of England's prosperity. We know that the United States furnish us with cotton, tobacco, rice, wheat, corn, hemp, flax, &c., and we imagine they will necessarily continue to furnish us with those products until the end of time; but we know nothing of the impending crisis in that country, and ignore the storm which is ready to burst. This year, the United States elect a President in the place of Mr. Buchanan. For the first time in the history of the Republic, the two principles of Free and Slave labour stand face to face. The Northern Free States are preparing to declare that Slavery is sectional, and shall henceforward be illegal, except in those States where it already exists. The South is preparing to maintain that Slavery is national—first, at the polls, and afterwards, by dis union or civil war. The Republican, or Free State party, has now the majority sufficient to elect a chief magistrate of the Republic. The President elected must swear to maintain the union of the States at any and all hazards, and the majority will force him to keep his oath. With civil war impending, with the Southern ports perhaps blockaded, and all communication with the North destroyed, how shall we obtain our cotton? But there are great and holy principles at issue in the present contest, which must interest the lovers of liberty throughout the world. When England emancipated the Slaves in her colonies, the Slaveholders were a small and unimportant body of men, compared with the entire British people. In the United States the question assumes a widely different aspect; for since the establishment of the Republic the government of the Confederation has been directed by the Slaveholding oligarchs, who are still supreme in the Capitol. The hour of their fall draws nigh, and the blow comes not from without, but from the free men of the Northern States, who are preparing to declare that "Come what will, Slavery shall be restrained." The issue is so tremendous, and the climax so near, that it is worth our while, as Englishmen, to examine the question closely. |