# The North Star (Rochester)/1848/01/07/Speech of George Thompson, Esq., M. P., on Free Trade with India

From the London Mercury.
The meeting being organized, Francis Carnac Brown, Esq., chairman, addressed the assembly as follows:—Ladies and gentlemen, in thanking you for the honor you have just conferred upon me, in electing me to preside over this very large meeting, it is necessary that I should address to you a few words explaining the reason why I have consented to take upon myself this office, seeing that I am altogether a stranger, not only to this present audience, but to this part of London. I will make my observations as brief as I possibly can, in order that I may not be the means of detaining you from hearing a gentleman whom I am perfectly aware you are all most anxious to listen to, and who has come to this meeting for the express purpose of bringing the important subject which we shall have to discuss to-night, under the consideration of this meeting. I will, therefore, merely observe to you, that my connection with your honorable member, Mr. George Thompson, does not date from yesterday (hear, hear.) It is now about eight years since I returned from India, and met that gentleman, who had not long before landed upon the shores of this country, upon his arrival from a visit to the U. States of America, where as you well know, he had devoted a considerable portion of his time and energies to the abolition of slavery in that land. Brought together by a community of sentiment, we met, and from time to time until the present a close and continued intimacy has subsisted between us. We have acted together upon many occasions for the promotion of questions relating to India, and at length a period has arrived when it appears to the best friends of India, that the powerful advocacy of your member may be used with the very best effect, for the purpose of introducing to the public and the Legislature, subjects of the greatest importance to our vast empire in the East, and of so far enlightening public opinion upon this question, that you, and all men, may have an opportunity of seeing and of knowing that, in bringing before your notice the condition of India, we are at the same time calling your attention to a subject of the deepest and most vital interest to yourselves. When Mr. George Thompson shall have concluded his address to-night, I have not the slightest doubt that there will not be one person in this assembly, who will leave the room without being impressed with the conviction of the truth of the statement I have made, namely—that there is no individual present, whose interest, directly or indirectly, in not most essentially concerned in the fate of that country, which is to be the topic of the present lecture. With these prefatory remarks, I now beg leave to introduce to you, your own member, Mr. George Thompson. (Cheers.)
George Thomson Esq., M. P., rose, and was enthusiastically greeted. He said: I have sought this opportunity that I may lay before you my views on a question of paramount importance to the interests of this country and of the empire at large. You have done me the honor to elect me as one of your representatives in the Parliament of England, and I consider, therefore, that it is my duty to put you in possession of my opinions on a subject which will occupy the chief portion of my attention in the Legislature, and which I intend to agitate, as I have time and strength, both indoors and out, until it is appreciated, as I think it ought to be, by the people generally. (Cheers.) I do not doubt, that when I have concluded, you will share my convictions respecting the vital importance of the question I am about to discuss, and that you will not only cheerfully consent to my devoting myself to its advocacy, but be ready also to lend me your best co-operation. (Cheers.) I therefore ask your candid and serious attention. I ask that you will weigh deliberately, the facts, the statistics, and the arguments I shall adduce, and that you will vote for nothing, the propriety and truth of which I do not fully and most satisfactorily establish. (Cheers.)
The topic on which I have to address you this evening is, "Free Trade with India, in relation to the condition and prospects of this country." This text might seem to limit the discussion to matters connected with India and England, and to the results accruing to those countries exclusively from an extension of their commercial intercourse. The subject, however, as I think I shall be able to demonstrate, embraces another result, namely—the achievement of the overthrow of slavery and the slave trade—an effect following upon the attainment of the former object. A few words about slavery will bring me naturally to the subject which has been announced, and enable you to trace out for yourselves the inevitable effect of which I have spoken. In the United States of America, a country boasting its declaration of independence, its doctrines of equality, its free political institutions, its love of universal liberty, its educated and enlightened population, its numerous ecclesiastical bodies untrammelled by state connection, its efforts for the diffusion of the Scriptures, and its many and powerful organizations for promulgating the faith of the gospel throughout the world,—every sixth man, woman and child is a slave. (Shame!) Sixteen millions of free men have banded themselves together to hold in hopeless bondage three millions of their fellow creatures! (Hear!)
A similar number of slaves are found in the empire of Brazil. Spain holds another million in her colonies. France and Holland participate in the crime of their colonies. We turn to Africa. Notwithstanding the abolition of the slave trade with Africa, by England and the United States, simultaneously, in the year 1808, a thousand human beings are, every day, either slaughtered in their own villages, or die on their way from the interior to the coast, or, expiring in the middle passage, are thrown into the deep; or living to reach the port, are sold in the slave market, to be worked to death on the coffee and sugar plantations of Cuba and Brazil. The statistics of this system inform us that from eight to nine millions are in bondage, and that Africa is robbed of a thousand of her children every day! Such are slavery and the slave trade, as carried on by nominally Christian nations, in Europe and America, at the present time. (Cries of shame, and great sensation.) The object of this address is not to characterize slavery, or to dwell upon its peculiar features in the various countries where it exists, but to point out the remedy as a consequence flowing from a certain measure. Let me nevertheless observe, that I do not underrate the value and necessity of the measures hitherto employed in the cause of abolition; still less do I desire to see them discontinued. They are all, save those which imply force, useful, and partially efficacious. But, besides the antidotes, which are of a purely moral and religious character, there is a remedy at hand, at once simple, direct, easy, peaceful, omnipotent, and infallible—a remedy capable of immediate application,—a remedy possessed by England, and by no other—a remedy which, if resorted to, will be found unattended by aught that is exceptionable—a remedy fraught with blessings far beyond even the extinction of slavery and the slave trade.—(Cheers.)
This remedy is no discovery of yesterday. For eight or nine years there have been a few persons in this country who, having taken the trouble to acquaint themselves with the facts relating to the history, condition, and resources of the vast empire which Great Britain has obtained in the East, have been convinced that it was eminently practicable, by one and the same peaceful process, to achieve a greater triumph in the cause of freedom and humanity, and confer more extensive and permanent blessings, of a temporal nature, on the world, than were ever before placed within the limits of human power and human accomplishment. They are still convinced that England possesses within herself, aided by the resources of her matchless Asiatic Empire, the means of utterly abolishing the African slave trade; of giving freedom to every slave in the islands and on the continent of America; of raising from depression and ruin, millions of her conquered Hindoo subjects; and of augmenting indefinitely her home manufacturing, trading, and maritime prosperity. (Cheers.) It has been my privilege to be intimately associated with those who have cherished this conviction—I have long shared that conviction with them—and in my humble efforts to impart it to others, I have been aided by the knowledge, experience, and generous co-operation of those to whom I have referred. The accuracy of the facts long since put forth on this subject has been tested; and so far from those facts having been either shaken or overthrown, they have been confirmed and illustrated by the most striking events; so that what were once the convictions of a few are becoming the convictions of multitudes; indeed, of all intelligent minds with the patience and candor to enter upon an impartial inquiry on the subject. (Loud cheers.)
A single glance at the origin of negro slavery will suggest the remedy which ought to be applied. The slavery and the slave trade of the western world began in a desire to obtain by forced labor the products of the earth. The Spaniards enslaved the Mexicans, that they might work them in mines, and enrich themselves with the precious ores which they extracted. A similar motive led to the enslavement, and brought about the extermination of the Caribs of the West India Islands. The introduction of the sugar cane, and the demand for its produce, led to the trade in slaves with Africa; and the enslavement of seven millions of Africans and their descendants, at the present time, and all the existing horrors and atrocities of the African slave trade, are founded upon the desire to realise the profits which are obtainable by the growth and and sale of five articles—sugar, coffee, cotton, rice and tobacco. Were the demand for these to cease, the nourishment and vitality of these systems would cease, and they would perish from the earth. Abundant means exist for the elucidation of the topic now under discussion, but the materials to which I shall resort will be drawn chiefly from a pamphlet just given to the world, by a gentleman in every way qualified to furnish the necessary information. I shall make free use both of the facts he has collected, and the language he has employed; assured that he will be gratified if, by any means, I can render his production subservient to the end I have in view. The pamphlet to which I refer is entitled, "Free Trade and the Cotton Question with reference to India—By Francis Carnac Brown, Esq., of Tellicherry,"—our present chairman. (Cheers.) Mr. Brown is connected by birth with the soil of India, and is the proprietor of a large estate on the coast of Malabar. I entertain the utmost respect for his judgment, and have the fullest reliance on his veracity. The pamphlet I have named, and from which I am about very largely to quote, does not so much deal in opinions as in evidence—evidence drawn from the highest and most unexceptionable sources. The authorities cited are,—Documents connected with the Records of the East India Company; Minutes and Letters of Members of Council; Reports drawn up by Members of the Indian Government; Reports published by the Directors of the East India Company; and Official Returns of Exports and Imports. This pamphlet is addressed to her Majesty's Minister for Indian Affairs, and is intended for the instruction and guidance of the manufacturers of England, the statesmen and legislators of this great empire, and the true friends of British India and the civilization of the world. It is one of the most important documents ever published, and will, I trust, secure its author the gratitude of the nation. I know the only reward he seeks is the happiness and prosperity of mankind. (Loud cheers.)
Seventy years ago, the colonies of America struck a decisive blow for political freedom and national independence. After a bloody struggle, they achieved their object; they saw the last of the king's troops quit their shores; and, under a general government of their own, and a constitution adopted in a Congress of the States, became the "United States of America." The early settlers in Virginia had introduced negro slaves for the cultivation of their plantations, and before the Declaration of Independence slavery had extended itself over the whole of the colonies. On the separation of the States from the mother country, the Northern and Eastern republics gave liberty to their slaves. The constitution adopted by the States gave no power to the federal government to abolish slavery; and the Southern States still continued to maintain the system. The principal exports of these States were tobacco and rice. So great, however, was the difficulty, as early as 1784, of finding remunerative employment far the small number of slaves that were then there, that the masters, to save themselves from ruin, deliberated upon the propriety of setting all the slaves they possessed at liberty. (Hear! hear!) How stood matters in England at this period? Prior to the existence of the East India Company, the clothing of the people of England had been chiefly woolen, and the manufacturers of the North of England enjoyed the chief part of the trade. Great was the outcry when the cloths, the muslins, the silks, and the nankeens of India and China came into competition with the home manufactures of Lancashire. At length, however, the manufacture of cotton goods sprung up; the East India Company supplied the raw material. Had England existed as a manufacturing nation 2,000 years before, and had the means of reaching India been known, and the riches and capacity of the country understood, raw cotton in any quantity might have been obtained from a soil and a people where cotton had been grown and manufactured for 3,000 years, and whose clothe have been the wonder of the world and the boast of the people by whom they were fabricated. Now behold the revivifying effect of this new branch of English manufacture upon the system of slavery in the United States of America. (Hear.)
The East India Company were masters of the resources of a country which is the natural home of the cotton plant. For reasons which I shall not now particularize, they had not brought to this island a supply sufficient to meet the growing demand. An experiment had been made on the shores of South Carolina to cultivate a few cotton trees from seeds introduced from one of the West India Islands. On the 20th of January, 1785, a single bag of this cotton was landed on the wharf at Liverpool. That was a fatal day for the cause of human liberty. The sample was approved, and orders were given to send all of the same quality that could be raised. Time, however, was wanting; and, therefore, in 1786, the total export of cotton from the United States of America was only 900 pounds. In England, ingenuity, and capital and enterprise were embarked in the manufacture of cotton goods; and in America similar qualities were soon engaged to turn the labor of the slaves to profitable account, and to develop the resources of a territory illimitable in its extent. The race thus commenced has continued down to the present hour. In 1760 Hargreaves invented the spinning-jenny; Arkwright soon after introduced the spinning-frame; Crompton, in 1799, combined the two, and called it the mule. In 1785, the year I am now speaking of, Watt brought the steam engine to that perfect state for acting which made it profitable. Cartwright afterwards invented the power-loom. Sixty years only have elapsed since this career on the part of these two great countries began. At home, contemporaneously with the ever increasing consumption of cotton goods by our own people, the export of cotton goods has advanced, until it has exceeded the mighty value of £25,000,000 sterling per annum; being almost half the amount of the entire exports of the United Kingdom. Not less than £70,000,000 of British capital is invested in the cotton trade of this country; more than two millions of our population depend on this trade for employment; and, consequently, for the means of subsistence. (Hear!) "The truth is," says the able editor of the Economist, "that there is nothing, except food itself, which is of such material consequence to the well being of this country, as an abundant supply of cotton; forming, as it does, the basis of so large a portion of our commerce, and of the employment of our workpeople." (Hear! hear!) "On the supply of raw cotton," says the Times, "does it absolutely depend whether the population of Lancashire shall or shall not be reduced to the state of the population of Cork. The cotton plantations of New Orleans feed the inhabitants of Manchester, as directly as the potato fields of Mayo or Galway feed or starve the peasants of Connaught." Thus, in sixty years, has this single branch of British manufactures become of vital national importance. It is interwoven with all that relates to the employment of our population, of our capital, and of our shipping; and all that relates to our credit, or solvency, and our domestic peace, contentment, and security. Its rapid growth is wonderful; its magnitude is stupendous; and its connection with all that is precious and important in the country is so close and inseparable that the boldest and most far-seeing minds in the community cannot contemplate any serious vicissitude befalling it without the utmost alarm and terror. (Hear! hear!) It was to supply England with the raw material for this branch of her manufactures that the planters of America, in 1786, turned their attention and energies to cotton cultivation. A new era commenced. All thoughts of giving emancipation to the slave ceased; for they became suddenly valuable as human beasts of burden on the plantation, or as stock to raise, by natural increase, the thousands of their kind required to cultivate this new article of produce. (Hear!) There was a rush from the worn-out and profitless soils of the older states to the new and virgin soils beyond. The vast valley of the Mississippi, and the extensive peninsula of Florida, presented a boundless field for enterprise, and the profitable employment of slave labor; and thither those who scrupled not to amass riches by violence and slavery betook themselves. Washington became the emporium of the domestic slave trade, and New Orleans the slave market of the South. The demand for cotton wool in England closed the gates of mercy on the bondmen of America; it quenched the hopes of the friends of humanity; it inflamed the love of Mammon in the breasts of the trans-Atlantic slave-holders, and offered them a tempting premium to pursue their guilty traffic, in the sure hope of a rich reward.
In 1785, America exported from her shores a single bag of cotton wool. In 1843, that same country sent across the sea, from her slave-tilled plantations, during the first nine months of that year, seven hundred end ninety-two millions of pounds weight! In 1785, America held within her borders 600,000 slaves, and these, as we have seen, had become unprofitable, and were, therefore, standing on the threshhold of freedom. In 1840, America contained 2,487,213 slaves, and they were valued by an American statesman, Henry Clay, himself entitled to be regarded as a fit judge in the matter, being born a southern man and a slave-holder and breeder, at 120,000,000 of dollars! In 1785, a single bag of cotton was exported from America. In 1841 the total exports from the shores of that country amounted in value to $106,382,722, of which her exported cotton amounted to $54,390,331, being $77,940 in excess of all her other exports put together. In 1790, the shipping of the United States was set down as 487,377 tons, and in 1844, at 1,280,095 tons!
While driving this profitable trade in the staple articles of our manufactures, the United States have been comparatively inattentive to the growth of other kinds of tropical produce; and have, therefore, greatly enriched their slave-holding neighbors, by becoming customers for the articles raised on their plantations. Her own prosperity, built on the foundation I have pointed out, has enabled her to be a large consumer of foreign produce of slave growth. Hence we find her importing, during 1846, 12,000,000 of pounds weight of slave-grown coffee, and nearly 60,000 tons of slave-grown sugar. Her cotton has largely assisted her to do this; and through our consumption of this slave-grown article of America, we have been feeding to fatness the slaveholders of Cuba and Brazil, and thus supplying to them their only stimulus to the continuance of their slave trade with Africa. "While, therefore," says Mr. Brown, "we have been lavishing millions of money, and sacrificing thousands of valuable lives, since the peace of 1814, to suppress slavery in Africa, our manufactures have, year by year, been supplying a larger and larger sum to the United States, by which the demand for slaves was sure to be kept up and encouraged in Cuba and Brazil. This is the explanation, why one cargo in four, instead of one in three, now repays the Brazilian slavers. (Cheers.)
The cotton manufacture of England, viewed through the medium of the facts now stated, stands out as the prime inciting cause of untold and unutterable misery and crime. The arm that contributes to the wealth, the strength, and the greatness of our native land, deals death and destruction on a continent on one side of the ocean, and sustains and perpetuates colossal systems of slavery on the other. Whilst spending thousands annually to shield the coast of Africa from the visits of the slave trader, we are furnishing millions to the slaveholders of America. While laying units on the altar of freedom we are heaping ingots on the altar of slavery. While assembled together to express our sympathy with the slave, and our abhorrence of the system which has reduced him to what he is—a marketable chattel in the eye of the law—we are at the same time, as a nation, supplying the only effectual proof of the system. We are holding in our own hands the key which has shot the bolt upon him in his prison-house; nay, our persons are arrayed in the very fabrics which have been woven from the fruits of the earth, which he is kept a slave to fill by his unpaid labor, and to moisten with his unpitied tears! (Great cheers.) That such a state of things is inconsistent with the revealed law of God, we know. That it is not required by the law of nature, or the circumstances of man's condition here, we must admit—or, the principle must be conceded, that the law of God is at war with the ordinations of nature, and that the Deity himself is answerable for the origin and continuance of the atrocious systems which the voice of nature condemns as inhuman and unjust. (Loud cheers.) That the doctrines of political economy are inconsistent either with the precepts of revelation, the laws of nature, or the rights and happiness of any portion of the human race, we do not believe. We hold them to be based on equal justice, and their practice the carrying out of the rules which God and nature have manifestly prescribed. (Cheers.) We believe, too, that all the inventions of genius, all the aids of machinery, all the love of adventure and enterprise implanted in the breast of man, are compatible in their fullest exercise and application with the happiness of the human race. Nay, more, that wisely directed and controlled by a sense of justice, and an observance of the rights common to all, they are calculated and designed largely to augment the sum of human felicity, and to advance man in his progress to the highest attainable condition in civilization and power. (Great applause.)
Let me now proceed to show the foundations on which we rest this belief. As if in anticipation of the present circumstances of this country, and the future destinies of the world, God has made provision in nature—in the varying climates of the globe, and the habits and positions of the different races of mankind, for the useful application of all the creations of mechanical skill, for the largest conceivable augmentation of commerce, and for the gratification and reward of all honorable adventure and enterprise. (Cheers.) Slavery is no less at war with the material interests of nations, the principles of free-trade, and the teachings of political economy, than with the rights and happiness of its victims. A return to these immutable laws is the road to the abolition of slavery. England is in a position to set the bright example. There is hope for the slave if England will be wise. England possesses a lever powerful enough to overthrow the bloodstained fabric which has been reared, not less by a violation of the laws of nature and political economy, than by an outrage on the inalienable rights of humanity, and the abrogation of the statutes of the Almighty. That I may at once prove this, I will carry you for a few momenta to the "Gorgeous East," and land you on the shores of British India—a country
"Whose air is balm; whose ocean spreads O'er coral rocks and amber beds; Whose mountains, pregnant with the beam Of the warm sun, with diamonds teem; Whose rivulets are like rich brides, Lovely, with gold beneath their tides; Whose sandal groves and bowers of spice Might be a Peri's paradise." (Loud cheers.)
Geographically, India is that large, distinct, and peculiar portion of the earth, stretching over twenty-eight degrees of latitude, and twenty-four degrees of longitude, and enclosed on all sides by the sea, by the stupendous range of the Himmaylayas, and by two of the greatest rivers in the world, the Indus and Burrampooter—boundaries which divide it from countries and races altogether separate and different. Politically, India is that country which, throughout the length and breadth of these, its natural limits, is more under paramount British dominion than any English country; for, throughout its extent, the will and the word of its British rulers are, in point of fact, law. Socially, India is a population of two hundred millions of men, the vast majority of whom have for ages been indissolubly knit together by a common religion and common traditions,—by common laws, and common civil and municipal institutions,—by common castes, rites, observances, and manners; and who, although apparently dissociated by the obstacles of languages, locally differing, are, nevertheless, united in hourly and daily intercourse, both among themselves and with their English rulers, by the medium of a common language, adopted with common consent by all, and prevailing from Cape Comorin to the Himmaylayas. No other country in the world, of the same extent, exhibits a natural connection capable of being made so close and intimate throughout all its parts, or so powerful in its aggregation, as this; for its area would readily sustain a population of 300,000,000 of men; and no people of equal number offer a more complete identity of social leanings and material interests, whereon to found, build up, and consolidate this connection.
Such is British India, an empire extending over 1,200,000 square miles! Anxious as I am to state nothing on my own authority, I will not describe the impressions which my own mind received while travelling round its entire coast—while entering its ports—while gazing on its fruit-clad hills—or journeying through its luxuriant plains—or examining its endless diversified productions,—but borrow from the work of Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone, the briefest summary I have ever met with of the natural riches this granary of the world. "Whole plains," Mr. Elphinstone says, "are covered with cotton, tobacco, and poppies; roses are grown for attar and rosewater; the sugar-cane, though requiring sedulous care in its culture, and rich and well watered spots for its growth, is abundant. Large tracts are given up to indigo, while many more brilliant dyes are among the produce of the fields; and silk, flax, mustard, sessamun, palma christi, and other plants yielding an ample supply of oil, both for culinary and other purposes; besides wheat, barley, the panicum italicum, and innumerable other descriptions of grain, for which Englishmen have no name; and many kinds of pulse, and roots, and vegetables, and fruits, and spices, combine to make the earth redolent with beauty, and Hindostan foremost among the regions of the globe, as the choice store-house of nature." (Cheers.) Such is the country over which the sway of Great Britain universally extends; whose boundless riches are at our command; where the sceptre of Victoria has swallowed up the sceptres of fifty princes. (Hear! hear! and cheers.) Let me proceed to show you how far this magnificent realm, thus subject, through all the millions of its population, and all its diversified regions of fertility and beauty, to the absolute dominion of this island, is able to supply the articles now procured from those doleful abodes of slavery, where every wind that blows gathers up the sighs of bleeding, broken hearts;—
"Where laughter is not mirth, nor thought the mind, Nor words a language, nor even men mankind."
Scenes of desolation and slaughter—
"Where the vultures and vampyres of Mammon resort, Where Columbia exultingly drains Her life blood from Africa's veins; Where the image of God is accounted as base As the image of Cæsar set up in its place."
Those mis-named, free, republican, Christian States,
"Whose fustian flag of freedom waves, In mockery o'er a land of slaves."
(Tremendous cheering.)
The limits necessarily prescribed to an address like the present, will not permit me to go into details upon more than one branch of the subject; and I shall therefore confine myself on this occasion to the article of cotton wool. Eleven years ago, the directors of the East India Company published a volume of reports on the culture and manufacture of cotton wool, raw silk, and indigo in India. In that volume is a letter addressed by the directors themselves to the Board of Control, in which they state that "The cotton plant is indigenous throughout the peninsula of India, from the extreme south to the foot of the Himmaylaya mountains." This assertion of the directors is abundantly supported by the contents of their bulky volume, which is filled by the reports supplied to them by the different collectors of revenue throughout India. "These documents show conclusively," says Mr. Brown, "that not only is cotton an article of immemorial domestic cultivation in every one of the provinces, but that the progress of the East India Company has been marked by the successive acquisition of every province, and the virtual supremacy obtained over every native state south of the Sutledge, which was peculiarly favored for its growth and production of cotton. Continuing this career of acquisition, the last year, the year 1846, saw annexed to the company's rule the province of the Jullindar Doab—the fertile province north of the river Sutledge, which there produces the finest cotton. The same year saw the real extension of the British frontier carried to Attock and Cashmeer. Every acre of land, therefore, in India, capable of growing cotton, within the vast geographical limits assigned to the plant in 1828 (when the directors wrote their letter to the Indian board,) is, in 1847, subject to British control. These limits embrace a country, for the most part cultivated and civilized, of not less extent than the whole of Europe south of the river Niemen, peopled by at least 150,000,000 of intelligent and industrious men. To doubt the capacity of this country to produce cotton in adequate quantities for the wants of England, is to doubt the territorial capacity of three-fourths of all Europe to produce cabbages for its consumption, if cabbages and not cotton were the produce required for the use of its population and the working of its mills."
So much for the natural capacity of the soil of India. A word now in reference to the ability of the natives to turn these natural advantages to account. Let us now look at the capacity of the natives. (Hear!) "The next doubt," says the same intelligent author, "which has been started, and in England most industriously circulated, until it also has become an article of belief, is the doubt whether the natives of India possess the requisite knowledge and manual skill to grow cotton as well as the slaves of the United States. The proofs to dispel and destroy this doubt can no longer be sought for in the manufactures of India. God has willed that their soil shall endure; but their manufactures, the work of their hands, once unrivaled, are fast passing away. The muslins of Dacca, that beautiful manufacture that was to Bengal what the manufacture of steam engines is to England, absolutely unsurpassed, has, within living memory, become utterly extinct." (Hear!) A remarkable confirmation of the truth of this affecting statement has recently reached this country. In a Bengal newspaper, called the Friend of India, dated August 19th, there is a notice of a work just then published, entitled the "Commercial Annual for the year ending April, 1847," containing a view of the trade of Bengal. This volume informs the world that the past commercial year in that part of India has been rendered memorable, as the year in which the export of Indian piece goods to England has entirely ceased. Not one single yard has been sent to this country for sale. Fifty years ago, as stated by Mr. Brown, the city of Dacca was celebrated for its almost magical fabrics, and thousands of looms were busily employed in the manufacture of cotton cloth for the English markets; and the export of piece goods from the port of Calcutta alone, amounted to more than two millions sterling. Now, that vast and profitable trade has become entirely extinct; not a single yard of cloth is exported to this country—the grass grows in the once stirring and thriving streets of Dacca, and the jungle is fast invading its suburb! In the year 1846–47, instead of exporting, as at the beginning of the century, two millions of pounds worth of native goods, Bengal imported £3,134,986 worth of English yarns, twist, and cloths, manufactured from American cotton-wool. In this single fact, the demonstration is complete and incontrovertible, that England has, within half a century, succeeded in building up the system of negro slavery in America, (which was rapidly decaying) and in annihilating the manufactures of Bengal, once flourishing and profitable.
Alas, for the Hindoo and the African! I am far from bringing any charge against the manufacturers as a class. They are the greatest benefactors of this country, and would gladly have obtained their raw cotton from India. The guilty parties are those whose blind, oppressive, and infatuated policy has prevented the natives of India from sending cotton to England, and thereby becoming customers, not to the extent of three millions, but twenty, if our surplus had reached that amount. (Loud cheers.) Notwithstanding the official announcement of the extinction of Indian manufactures for purposes of export, the proof of the ability of the natives of India to produce the cotton of commerce, as good as when their fabrics clothed the world, has been recently obtained in a manner so complete, satisfactory, and conclusive, as must henceforth banish every doubt on the subject. In consequence of the plan laid by the late bank of the United States, to monopolize the crop of American cotton, in the year 1838–39, the cotton manufacturers of Lancashire, roused by the attempt, sent a deputation of their body to London, to remonstrate with the directors of the East India Company, upon the small supply of indifferent cotton received from India. The directors, solicitous to lull the alarm and calm the expostulations of all the remonstrants, devised a novel expedient, and diverted attention by means of it from India to America. They forthwith dispatched one of their officers, a captain of Native Infantry, to the United States, where he engaged ten cotton planters, and in 1840, proceeded with them to India. There they were distributed in ​twos and threes over the vast surface of the country, and set about teaching 100,000,000 of natives how to grow a plant which their forefathers had cultivated in perfection for 3,000 years. Two of these Americans, Messrs. Mercer and Howley, found their way to the great cotton growing district of the southern Mahratta country. Now, mark the success of their mission! On the 28th of January last, 1847, the Governor in Council of Bombay addressed a circular to the several mercantile houses of that presidency, giving to the English and native gentlemen composing this large and respectable body, a detail of the government measures connected with introducing an improved system of cultivating and cleaning cotton in the southern Mahratta country, in the hope that the mercantile community would come forward and freely purchase a product, the improved quality of which would, doubtless, command a high price in the London and China markets. The governor then proceeds to detail the nature of the government measures and their results.
"They were commenced," he says "in 1843, under the superintendence of Mr. Mercer, an American cotton planter of great experience, energy and zeal, who began his farming operations at a village in the collectorate of Dharwar. In 1844, Mr. Howley was sent to the same district, and undertook the management of an experimental farm at another village." I will now quote the exact words of the governor in council of Bombay. "In 1845–46, Mr. Mercer represented to the government, that the experimental farms were only a useless expense to government; that the American system of cultivation was not adapted to India; that the natives of India were, from their knowledge of the climate and capabilities of the soil, able to cultivate better and much more economically than any European, and requested that the farms might be abolished." Such is the testimony of Mr. Mercer, as quoted by the governor in council, of Bombay. Let me now request your attention to the testimony of the British collector of revenue in the same district, who had overlooked the operations of the two American planters, and was also intimately acquainted with the agricultural habits and skill of the people, as well as with the extent and capacity of the soil. I will again give the precise words of the government circular: "The acting collector of Dharwar states, that the New Orleans cotton has been cultivated to such an extent throughout the collectorate, that its qualities are well understood by the ryots, (the native farmers,) and there will be no further necessity of government planting on its own account. There is at present sufficient seed to plant it to any extent, provided the sale of the produce is guaranteed to them." Such is the solution of the problem which the Directors of the East India Company undertook, in 1839, to solve, by sending an expedition, consisting of a captain of native infantry and ten American cotton planters to India, to introduce an improved system of cultivation, an expedition which I find, by a statement of revenue and expenditure, recently laid befare Parliament, has cost the natives of India £12,026—a sum placed under the head of "Expenses in view to the improvement of the cultivation of the cotton in India." The solution is, the natives of India are able to cultivate cotton better than any European. (Loud applause.)
"The evidence, therefore," says Mr. Brown, "on the two following points, is complete and unanswerable:—First, the printed evidence of the directors shows, that, throughout a period of nearly seventy years, from 1781 to 1836, the company held dominion over provinces in India, capable of yielding cotton in any quantity demanded by England or by the world. Second, the evidence of American planters, accidentally promulgated in India in 1847, eleven years later, proves that the natives have always had the agricultural knowledge, the skill, and the experience, to produce that cotton better and cheaper than the Americans. Yet the natives have not produced it (for our use;) on the contrary, the official evidence is clear and conclusive to the fact that, in the face of a demand which has more than centupled, the supply from India has regularly declined. The causes of this admitted decay must, therefore, be sought elsewhere than in the sterility of the soil, or the incapacity of the people." Let us, then, occupy a few moments in attempting to trace out and understand some of these causes, for it is only after a correct conception of their nature and effect that we can wisely seek to remove them, and prepare ourselves for an enlightened and determined contest with the confederacy which has originated and upheld them. I will endeavor to make this part of the subject as plain and popular as its peculiar character will admit of.
Did time permit, it would be easy to demonstrate that from the commencement of the manufacture of cotton goods in this country, the raw material might have been supplied from India, in most abundant quantities, and sold in the Liverpool market, at twopence halfpenny per pound, yielding a remunerating profit to all parties concerned. Had there, at an early period, been, I will not say encouragement, afforded to the native growers of cotton, but mere fair play, and an absence of oppression and direct obstacles, there would have been at the present time a supply sent to this country of the most abundant kind, and of a quality greatly superior to that of the insignificant amount which is obtained from India. "And what price," you may inquire, "would have satisfied the grower?" I will answer that question from authority. Mr. Robert Ricards was a member of the Council of Bombay from the year 1806 to 1811, having previously spent twenty years of his official life in various parts of western India. In 1812, that gentleman addressed a letter to the Court of Directors, in the course of which he revealed (from the company's own records,) the details of a deliberate system practised by the government of Bombay, by which the native cotton growers were deprived of one-half of their whole crop as a land-tax, and were openly plundered of the other half by the company's servants, who put their own price upon it. (Shame.) In this letter Mr. Ricards demonstrates that, while the cotton growers were under the rule of the Mahomedans, who set the example of taking half the crop, they could cultivate to profit the best description of article, while cotton was selling on the spot at rather more than 2d. per pound. Deducting half, therefore, for the land-tax, the 1d. and a fraction represented the natural price at which the best commodity could be grown. In the pamphlet before me there is also the proof furnished, in the shape of a reference to actual transactions in Bombay, in 1789, when the price of Surat cotton was rather more than 2d. per lb.; being just the same price as it was in Bombay, in 1846, nearly sixty years after. Had the grower, therefore, not to yield up to the government one-half his entire crop, he would be satisfied, as he is now virtually, with 1d., or rather more, per lb.
It is, therefore, evident, that but for the existence and chartered monopoly of the East India Company, which took the whole of the crop at its own price, and returned to the grower the proceeds of only one-half, the price at which the best Surat cotton would have freely sold in London and Liverpool, in the years 1786 to 1789, (leaving a large profit to the importer,) would have been 2 l-2d. per lb. The prices at which the East India Company sold their cotton in London, in the years 1785 to 1791, were from 11d. to 1s. 1d. per lb. Of the several kind of United States' cotton, it is that called "Upland" which compares with and is valued against Surat. In 1846, the year of the short crop, the average price paid in London and Liverpool for the three kinds of American Upland, was 5 l-2d. per lb. It is unnecessary, after a simple enumeration of these recorded facts, to say why the production of cotton in the United States dates from the year 1785, or to prove at greater length than they prove, that it was the Directors of the East India Company who in truth and in reality sowed the fields of America broadcast with the seeds, and transferred the immemorial growth of India to take permanent and gigantic root on the shores of the Atlantic. Mr. Ricards in the letter to which I have referred, also states that the freight on the Company's ships amounted, at the time he wrote to £53 6s. per ton of fifty cubic feet, and £30 a ton on the extra ships, making a freight of 7 l-2d. and 4d. respectively upon every pound of cotton imported. Even down to the year 1829, the chartered freight of the company's ships was £19 5s. per ton, equal to a charge of more than 2d. per lb. I have quoted the testimony of one member of council at Bombay; let me refer to another, Mr. Francis Warden, now a director, who, in 1832, gave evidence before a select parliamentary committee, that the money tax imposed on every candy of Surat cotton of the value of £8, was £5 16s., leaving to the grower £2 4s. for his share, or £1 2s. less than was left him by the rapacious Mussulmans. (Shame.) This tax was levied before the cotton was suffered to be removed from the field on which it was grown; for which purpose deep pits were dug, and the cotton buried in them under clods of earth, and there kept in charge of the revenue officers, until the money demanded was raised. When released and removed to the grower's hut, in its unseeded state, for the purpose of being deprived of the seed by the women and children of his family, then was an annual tax levied upon every native gin; then an annual tax upon every bow, the implement required to rid it of dry leaves and dirt; then a tax upon the loom employed in weaving it; and if required for distant consumption, whether home or foreign, a transit duty. (Shame.)
What has been said in no way completely describes the wretched condition of the native cotton grower. It must not be supposed that he obtains the difference between the price of the cotton and the money-tax levied by the government. It must never be forgotten, in order correctly to appreciate the weight of the burden laid upon him, that he is compelled to pay his land-tax before he is suffered to have possession of his own cotton, and that the only security he has to offer, in order to obtain the money from the village money-lender and cotton-trader, is the crop buried in the pits, unweighed, unseeded, uncleaned, and altogether unmerchantable. The result is that one halfpenny a pound is all that is finally realised by this unhappy subject of the British government in India. "In Guzerat," says General Briggs, taking for the basis of his calculation the evidence given before Parliament, "746 pounds of clean cotton may be raised on seven acres of land, giving 106 pounds per acre. This cotton, estimated at 2 l-2d. per pound, which is forty per cent. more than its value at Dharwar, will sell for £1 1s., from which, if we deduct 16s., we have scarcely more than twenty-five per cent. of the whole produce, to pay the expenses of cultivation, and for the return of interest on capital; while the government receives seventy-five per cent. of the whole produce as the tax. The merchants of England, it is clear, cannot look to India for cotton, while such imposts prevail." Such is the testimony of an East India officer, who has made the land-tax and its effects upon cotton-growing his study for many years. (Cheers.)
Let me now ask you to go with me to Bengal, and see how the matter stands there. Among the journals published in India, there is no one more conspicuous for the caution with which all its statements are put forth, and its reluctance to bring charges against the government, than the Friend of India, edited by John Marshman, Esq., of Serampore. From a number of that journal dated the 11th of March last, I make the following extract:—"The deficiency in the cotton crop of America, and the rise in the price of that staple of our home manufactures, has naturally turned the attention of the public to the cultivation of cotton in India, where the plant was indigenous in the days or Cæsar. Our manufacturers look to the boundless fields of India in the hope of obtaining a supply for their looms; but unfortunately they look in vain. In Bundlekund (a large division of the Allahahad province to the South of the Jumna) the supply has fallen from sixty lacks (600,000,000 lbs) to ten (or 100,000,000 lbs.) At Bombay, the cultivation has been gradually dwindling, and there is every reason to apprehend that it will shortly become extinct. The export of cotton from Bombay to China, which formerly gave employment to so large a portion of the agricultural population, and its shipping, has been gradually contracted; and unless some adequate remedy can he supplied in time, this branch of trade must shortly close altogether." (Hear, hear.) The Friend of India then goes on to give a specimen of the process by which the cultivation and export of cotton, so essential at once to the prosperity both of India and of England, is deliberately annihilated by those who administer the revenue system under the East India Company. Names, dates and official documents are quoted. "The fiscal history of the province of British Bundlekund, which is the great cotton district on this side of India, most clearly demonstrates the impolicy of over assessment. We have now before us a valuable report of the settlement of Zillah Humeerpore, by Mr. Allen and Mr. Muir, of the civil service, which supplies us with facts of the utmost value, and gives information that may he turned to the best account at the present moment. It teaches us the most important lessons. It shows how the prosperity of a district may he blighted, and half a million of its inhabitants reduced to absolute destitution, in the shortest period of time. It tells us how a single collector may ruin, not only the condition but the prospects of a district, depopulate its villages, and convert its smiling fields into barren wastes.
Our rule commenced there in 1806, and for the first ten years our fiscal administration was just and equitable.
"The forbearance and happy arrangements of government appear to have had their full effect in developing the resources of the country." The Zemindars (the land owners) were in a flourishing condition; their tenantry satisfied and happy, and the district which had formerly been a scene of uninterrupted devastation, or predatory incursions, presented a picture of industry and contentment. In the year 1816, a year ever memorable in the annals of that unfortunate province, Mr. Scott Waring, the collector, took charge of it, and formed a new settlement of the rent (government tax.) In the western districts he raised the assessment thirty, and in the eastern districts, no less than forty-six per cent! The result of this oppressive exaction in the eastern division soon became apparent in the ruin of the Zemindars, the destitution of the poor ryots (the cultivators,) and the desolation of the province. Of the total number of villages, amounting to 621, only 139 were preserved by the original landholders. Of 137 villages brought to sale during this period, assessed at two lakhs and thirty thousand rupees (£23,000) no less than sixty-one were purchased by government, because there were no bidders at all; while the remaining seventy-six, which were sold to other parties, realized only thirty-nine thousand rupees (£3,900) or about four months' rent! Every man of substance who agreed to take the villages, on the recusancy of the Zemindars, became a beggar. Such was the result in the eastern district, of Mr. Waring's exertions at the revenue screw. In the western districts, the proprietors of 178 villages threw up their lands rather than agree to his exhorbitant demands. "It would be useless to recount," says Mr. Muir, "the sickening detail of absconding Zemindars, who, according to Mr. Waring, fled only because the real value of their estates was beginning to come to light, or of desolated villages, whose lands it was said were thrown out of cultivation merely to produce a decrease of assessment. No one who has not toiled through the details of each village can conceive the extent of alienation of property or the misery attendant on the depopulation of villages, the ruin of estates, and the disruption of society which have prevailed in this unhappy country.
Misfortunes seldom come single. After Mr. Waring, whose name is never mentioned in Bundlekund without a malediction, and is ordinarily used like that of an ogre, by mothers to frighten disobedient children, came Mr. W. H. Valpy, who entered into his views with increased ardor and gave another hearty turn to the revenue screw. Then came the gradual discontinuance of the company's advances for cotton, which had formerly exceeded the revenue of the province, and finally the calamitous seasons of 1830, 1834, and 1838. The hand of man had been succeeded by visitations of Providence, and the country was reduced to the lowest state of desolation, when the new settlement, which had given such just renown to the name of Robert Mertins Bird, was undertaken and completed. But it is easier to ruin than to revive a province. Five years of over assessment had produced that prostration of agricultural resources, which twenty years of moderation could not restore. The settlement officers, in every instance, made large reductions in rent, in the hope of reviving the prosperity of the ruined district; and in reference to the more immediate object of this article, reduced the rent-tax of the soil on which the cotton is raised, to a sum varying from eight annas to one rupee a bigah—that is on an average, to about one third of the assessment, which the Englishman describes as prevailing in the Broach. But it is found impossible now to realize the same amount of revenue which was obtained so freely before the calamitous advent of Mr. Waring. It is to be hoped therefore that the lesson thus taught us, that over assessment invariably defeats its own object, and destroys the prospects of the exchequer for a long period of time, will not be lost on us.
To the Committee now said to be sitting at Bombay, we particularly recommend the following from Muir's report:
"Had we been contented with the revenue of 1815,and been solicitous only to equalize it, the district would, without doubt, have continued to flourish; extent of cultivation would have kept pace with the increase of capital and inhabitants, and the concomitant advantages of trade and commerce would have added to the riches of the country, and to its strength for withstanding the attacks of famine. Our income, if not directly increased, certainly would not have fallen off, and would thus have been, at the least, twenty per cent. greater that the impoverished land, denuded in many quarters of its population, can now possibly yield." Let me afford you one more glance into the reasons why the natives of India, under the East India Company's rule, do not cultivate produce for this country. Mr. Thomas Williamson, late revenue commissioner at Bombay, in a letter dated 1846, addressed to Lord Wharncliffe, as Chairman of the Great India Peninsular Railway Company, tells his lordship, that besides the land which produces cotton at present, there is a vast extent of waste land capable of producing the article, and that a very slight degree of encouragement would be sufficient to attract cultivators supplied with such scanty means as are there sufficient for tillage, and that they would greedily accept the terms which would be deemed hard by the enterprising farmers in England. Well, this same Mr. Williamson, when superintending these very districts, granted to the natives leases of waste land, free from tax for a few years, for the express purpose of cultivating upon it cotton and the Mauritius sugar-cane. The last, to attain perfection, requires to be manured and irrigated and consequently demands a considerable preliminary outlay. The natives joyfully accepted the leases, and set to work with the utmost alacrity and industry. What did the Directors of the East India Company do on hearing of this wise and prudent measure? The official gazette shall answer for them:
Bombay Government Gazette, 20th June, 1838.
"The Honorable the Court of Directors, having been pleased to disapprove of the notifications of the 24th February and 1st August, 1835, and of the 1st and 17th November, 1836, issued under authority of Government, by the Revenue Commissioner, granting certain exemptions from assessment (land-tax) to land cultivated with cotton and the Mauritius sugar cane, and to direct that such notifications be immediately recalled; the Right Honorable the Governor is pleased hereby to cancel the said notifications from this date." (Loud expressions of indignation.)
In conformity with this peremptory order, leases of waste land, granted nearby four years before by the authority of the Governor and Council of Bombay, and upon the faith of which the lessees had borrowed and spent their all, were cancelled at a moment's warning, the lessess were turned out of possession without the smallest compensation of the least redress, and most of them, as well as the persons who had advanced money to them on the security of the government leases, ruined for the remainder of their lives. This was done in 1838, and in 1840 the directors of the East India Company sent to the United States for ten American planters for the purpose of teaching these beggared and ruined natives how to grow cotton.
Let me now show you what the pecuniary result of this system has been as respects the prices paid for cotton by the manufacturers of this country. It has been before observed that the average price of the three kinds of American Uplands in the markets of the United Kingdom during the dear year of 1846 was 5 l-2d. per pound. The evidence adduced proves undeniably that, from the year 1785 down to the present time, the grower of Surat cotton would have been satisfied on the spot with the price of 1d. per pound, if freed from the company's preliminary land-tax of 1 l-2d. per pound, and liberated from all interference of the revenue officers. "My own knowledge," says Mr. Brown, "but especially my late father's personal and practical experience through more than half a century, lead me to affirm that a price of 1d. to 1 l-2d. per pound, paid to the native growers, free from tax, would have been remuneration sufficient to have secured from them the production of any quantity of cotton which the wants of England have required during the last sixty years. All the enquiries I have made lead me to the conviction that the same price would have paid the grower in every province in India, where the company found cotton to be a staple culture. Adding 1d. per pound for transport and the profit of the importer, a price of 2 l-2d. to 3d. per pound is the natural price at which, but for the tax and the interference of the company, good East India cotton would have been laid down in London and Liverpool. What the profit of the English manufactures would have been by having the command of the staple at this medium price, they themselves best know. But taking the price paid by the manufacturers for every description of United States cotton in the year 1846 at no more than the average price paid for "Uplands," namely, 5 l-2d. per lb. it is clear that they paid to the American 2 l-2d. per lb. more than the natural price of cotton, if the growth and the trade in India had been, as in the United States, perfectly free. Upon the total quantity received from the United States, this sum amounts to £5,236,252.—This was the excess of price they paid last year. But this year, owing to the short crop in the United States, the consequent rise in every market, the scarcity of food throughout Europe, and the demand for tonnage in the United States for the purpose of shipping every pound of spare food to where food was at famine prices,—in consequence of these concurrent visitations, it is computed by the Economist that the manufacturers will have to pay from four to five millions sterling more to the Americans for the short supply of the present year, than for the more abundant one of last. Their American cotton account for the two years will therefore stand thus:—
| 1846.—Ordinary enchanced price paid above natural price of East India cotton | 1846.—Ordinary enchanced price paid above natural price of East India cotton | £5,236,252 |
| 1847.—Dittoditto | 1847.—Dittoditto | 5,236,252 |
| Extraordinary enhanced price over 1846, | Extraordinary enhanced price over 1846, | 4,500,000 |
| Excess of price paid in two years to the United States tor cotton, | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ | £14,972,504. |
Do the losses of the manufacturers end even at this point? It would be a very superficial examination of the subject which should lead to any such conclusion. This sacrifice is only the beginning of what they have to suffer. In consequence of the high price of food everywhere, and the absorption of the national capital as well as of the profits and wages of individuals in the purchase of dear food, the price of manufactured goods, instead of keeping pace with the rise in the price of cotton, has sunk much below this level, from the falling off of the usual demand at home and abroad. Manufacturers are compelled to hold and lock up their capital, or to sell at a loss in order to keep their mills working half time. The United States' merchant, gorged with English gold exported to pay for his corn and cotton, keeps aloof until manufactured goods have still further sunk to the point at which it is more profitable to him to import goods than to receive gold. He then enters the market, and it is by means of his purchases, made at the lowest point of depression, that the drain of gold is stopped; or, in other words, it is by the sacrifice of the accumulated industry and hard-earned property of the manufacturers that the exchanges are ultimately restored, the derangement of commerce remedied, and the nation's calamity arrested. It is manifest, therefore, that it would be better for the manufacturers to ask the East India Company to accept five millions, subscribed amongst themselves, and in return suffer the natives of India to grow cotton, free of land-tax, for the people of this country, than to carry on their operations under the existing system. Five millions so given in 1845 would have saved nearly fifteen. Mr. Brown eloquently concludes his remarks on this subject by inquiring:—"What has created and produced the cotton of the United States? What, at the same time, has cleared its wastes, attracted its immigrants, sextupled its population, peopled its towns, founded its manufactures, built its ships, created its navy, fed its trade, furnished its revenue, found scope for all its energies, and last, though, unhappily, not the least, perpetuated, with the foreign slave-trade, its own domestic slavery? It is not more abundant land than England has possessed in India, nor a more fertile soil, nor a more genial climate, nor cheaper labor, nor more millions of peaceable, industrious subjects; nor is it any decline in the native vigor and persevering enterprise of Englishmen, when left unfettered and un-domineered over, to exert their free scope in guiding and governing men and subduing nature, under the spirit and the ægis of their parent laws and institutions. Since it is undeniably not one of these superior advantages, which is the cause of the striking and different results exhibited by men of the same race, during the same period of time, in India and in the United States, I trust it is impossible that the reason of Englishmen, or the piety of the nation, will suffer the curse of barrenness with which India has been fatally stricken, or the poverty in which its people are steeped, to be longer laid, by the deception of speech and the studied concealment of facts, to the account of the will of Providence and the ordinances of God."
I have now endeavored to show the bearing of this question upon England and upon India, and to point out some of the causes of the non-importation of cotton from India. It is hardly necessary to dwell upon the anti-slavery view of the subject, for you must be before-hand with me. I will, however, venture to ask your attention to the views entertained by certain parties. What say the Southern Americans, speaking through the press of New Orleans? "By the blessing of heaven, the Southern planter is enabled to raise the noblest weed that was ever given for the comfort of the human family—a weed, destined to make a new era in modern commerce, if those who raise it have spirit and virtue enough to scorn and defy the banking and speculative quacks of the day. I have no idea that the slave-holding race could maintain their liberty or independence for five years without cotton. It is that which gives us our energy, our enterprise, our intelligence! and commands the respect of foreign powers. The Egyptian may look with devotion to his Nile, as the source of the power and wealth of Egypt; the pilgrim and inhabitant of the Holy Land may bathe in the sacred Jordon, and take comfort from the belief that he has washed away his sins—the Hindoo may worship the Lotus, under an idea that Vishnu created Brahma from its unfolded flowers; but a genuine slave-holder in South Carolina will ever look with reverence to the cotton plant, as the source of his power and his liberty. All the parchments upon earth could never protect him from the grasping avarice and financial fury of modern society. If he expects to preserve the peculiar institutions of his country, and transmit them to posterity, he must teach his children to hold the cotton plant in one hand, and the sword in the other, ever ready to defend it." What say the abolitionists of the United States?—"Cotton is now the great anti-abolition influence of this country. In whatever shape opposition to the cause of emancipation manifests itself—whether in the Church or State—in a mercantile or ecclesiastical association—it may be traced directly back to the cotton-bale. Were English and French manufacturers supplied with Indian or Egyptian cotton, the demand for slaves from Virginia and Maryland would cease—the growers of men and women for the cotton planting region would find no market for their human staple—and as a consequence, slavery would be unprofitable, and, as another consequence, Virginia statesmen would begin to believe with Thomas Jefferson, 'that all men are created equal;' the Virginia divines would very soon discover that slavery is incompatible with genuine Presbyterianism, whether of the old or new school. Slavery now lies entrenched behind its cotton bags—like General Jackson at New Orleans; and the efforts of the British or even American abolitionists to dislodge it by moral suasion, we fear will prove as ineffectual as those of General Packenham, to force the cotton barricades of the American camp, on the 8th January, 1815. We call then upon the abolitionists of Great Britain, to urge their government to foster and promote, to the extent of its power, the cultivation of cotton in the Indies. By so doing they will promote the interest of their own country—they will confer an incalculable benefit upon ours—they will lift the crushed millions of India from their degradation—and strike off the chains from three millions of American slaves. We confess that one of our main reliances, under God, for the bloodless termination of American slavery, is the increase of cotton cultivation in the peninsula of British India."
What were the words of the venerable Clarkson, written down to be delivered at the opening of the World's Convention for the abolition of slavery, held in 1840. "How, then," he says, "can you get at these (American planters) so as to influence their conduct. There is but one way; you must endeavor to make them feel their guilt in its consequences. You must endeavor by all justifiable means to affect their temporal interests. You must endeavor among other things, to have the produce of free tropical labor brought into the markets of Europe, and undersell them there, and if you can do this, your victory is sure. Now, that this is possible, that this may be done, there is no question. The East India Company alone can do it of themselves, and they can do it by means that are perfectly moral and pacific, according to your own principles, namely: by the cultivation of the earth and by the employment of free labor. They may, if they please, not only have the high honor of abolishing slavery and the slave trade, but the advantage of increasing their revenue beyond all calculation; for, in the first place, they have land in their possession twenty times more than equal to the supply of all Europe with tropical produce; in the second place, they can procure, not tens of thousands, but tens of millions of free laborers to work; in the third, what is of the greatest consequence in this case, the price of labor with these is only from a penny to three-halfpence per day. What slavery can stand against these prices? And here I would observe, that this is not a visionary or fanciful statement. Look at the American newspapers: look at the American pamphlets which have come out upon this subject; look at the opinion of the celebrated Judge Jay on this subject also; all, all, confess, and the planters, too, confess—but the latter with fear and trembling—that if the East India Company should resolve upon the cultivation of tropical products in India, and carry it to the extent to which they would be capable of carrying them—it is all over with American slavery."
At the risk of wearying you, I have laid my views before you at considerable length, and you may now perceive the nature of the objects to which I desire to devote myself (loud cheers.) Is it not a glorious goal after which I am reaching? (cheers.) Long, long have I looked to India with emotions which God alone has penetrated. The study of that country, in the history of its people, the capacity of its soil, its subjugation by England, and its future destinies, has been the passion of the last eight years of my life. Long, long ago I made a vow that I would live for that benefit of that country (loud cheers.) Have I your permission to redeem that vow? (long continued cheers.) But, let me tell you, I did not make that vow until I clearly perceived that he who labored for the good of India, was at the same time the truest and wisest friend of his own country, and the most efficient promoter of the extinction of slavery and the slave-trade (cheers.) Have I not shown you that "justice to India" is "prosperity to England" and "freedom to the slave?" (applause.) This was the motto I chose for a small newspaper I started on the 1st of January, 1841. It is my motto still. Will you adopt it? (cheers.) Well then, as I told you at the time I was a candidate for your suffrages, I shall be ever ready, by an honest vote, to support every good and sound measure, without reference to party; and I shall have no objection to speak a word on a subject I understand, unless, as is often the case, it should be superior wisdom to remain silent (cheers.) The question I have brought before you this evening, however, is that to which I wish you to grant me permission to devote myself; and that you might to some extent have an enlightened opinion respecting its merits, its magnitude, and its importance; I have delivered the address now brought to a close. Let me then ask you if you participate in my views regarding the vital importance of this question to the interest and happiness both of the people of this country and of India? (loud cheers.) Have I your sanction to give myself to the advocacy of this question? (renewed cheers.) Will you support me while I am humbly and honestly engaged in calling the attention of the country and the legislature to it? (great applause.) Will you allow me henceforth to say, that as far as you are concerned, my constituents are co-laborers with me on the question? (loud cheers, which lasted for a considerable time.) Enough. We understand one another. You have encouraged me on the threshold of this great work. In making the claims of India henceforth the peculiar object of my labors in parliament and throughout England, I shall have the firmest persuasion that I am acting in conformity with the best interests of my native country and the just rights of our conquered fellow subjects, and of the enslaved throughout the world. I shall now submit the following resolution. I think I have sustained every clause of it, save that which refers to the natives of India as customers for our manufactures; but it must be self-evident that it we improve the condition of 150,000,000 of men, we must of necessity increase their wants, and consequently open a vast market for our own manufactured products. In another address I will abundantly demonstrate this. With these remarks I shall read the resolution, which I do not doubt, from the manner in which you have responded to what has been said, will receive your cordial approval (loud cheers.)
"1. That it has been demonstated to this meeting, that India, a vast British possession, peopled by millions of peaceable, intelligent, and civilized British subjects has been gifted by nature with the capacity of producing every tropical raw commodity, which the capital and industry of England require for the constant and profitable employment of her population, or for the supply of any of their other wants.
"That it has been further demonstrated, that England, although the mistress of such a possession as British India, is rendered year by year more dependent for the supply of raw cotton, winch is the staple of her principal manufacture, and one of the main supports of the public revenue, upon the United States of America, a foreign country; and that England is also dependent upon the same country for the supply of the tobacco demanded by her population—both the cotton and the tobacco of the United States being the produce of slave labor.
"That consequently, the domestic peace and prosperity of this country; and the stability of a large portion of the public revenue, are made dependent,—First, upon the vicissitudes of the seasons, to which the cotton and tobacco plants, in common with all other productions of any other country, are liable;—Secondly, upon the maintenance of amicable relations between this country and the United States, and between the United States and other countries;—Thirdly, Upon the continuance of the submission of the numerous, increasing, and oppressed slave population of the United States of America.
"That this exclusive, unnecessary, and unnatural dependence—perpetuating as it does the slavery of millions of men—is the source, to a great extent, as is now experienced, of existing calamities, and manifestly pregnant with future evils to the best interests of England.
"That the free agricultural population of British India would be the natural customers of this country, in the exact measure that they would, if permitted, become the producers of commodities for the wants of England: that it has been clearly shown, that these intelligent and deserving British subjects are rendered incapable of becoming the nation's customers and producers, and of competing with the produce of the slave-states, by reason of the burthens imposed upon their soil and industry, and by the impediment of unwise restrictions placed upon their home and external trade:—
"Therefore. Resolved,—That it is the duty of the people of England, for the sake alike of England, of India, and of the enslaved throughout the world, to require from the Legislature the immediate removal of all imports which depress the agricutural energies and impede the commerce of the native population, and also the institution of a strict and impartial inquiry, in India, into the condition of the natives, and into the conduct and the acts arising out of the peculiar government ruling over them, which affect their well-being and retard they prosperity."