The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-08-01 00:00:00

we may,

the success which bas attended the reactionary
cause, infer that O'DoNNILL has not subdued the
liberalism of the Spanish Peninsula as quickly as
he anticipated. Saragossa had not bent to his
tyrannical yoke on the 29th. The troops and
National Guards, under. General FALCON, were

throwing up defences and preparing for a vigorous
resistance when we last heard from the city itself,
and we have every reason to believe that
the reported concession of five days time
for reflection, and adding to the strength of
the place, is a pure fabrication. It is not at all
likely that one moment would have been given to
a besieged town, to discuss the propriety of
surrending to a superior force. O'DONNELL and
his partisans have not shown any great regard for
the lives of their opponents, and that they should
do so now, simply because the scene of revolt is
transferred from Madrid to Saragossa, appears to
be perfectly ridiculous.
It may, therefore, be found that Saragossa has
successfully resisted the O'DONNELL soldiery, and
that it will take more troops than the reactionists
thought, to bring the Saragossans to obedience.
But why does the Court favourite remain silent so
long? Has he discovered that despotism has
no supporters in Spain, beyond a corruptible
and basely corrupt army? that the Carlists
will not make common cause with those
they think usurpers, and have always called
masked tyrants ?" Being left isolated and alone
nhospitable beach of Spanish politics,
O'DONNELL will find rather an uneviable situation.
Hitherto he has drawn largely on the liberal spirit
f the people, and he has found it equal to his
most sanguine hopes, and yet he suddenly turns
round, and draws the sword on this very spirit, and
seeks to rise above his perfidy without a friend
except an army, which would desert him and the
Crown to-morrow, for a popular leader and reliable
friend. Men who riso to great official distinction
by any public outrage, generally fall with equal
rapidity, and we are much mistaken if T) O 9 ONNELL
will not find the guilt of a succession of massacres,
greater than the fertility of his genius as a states-
friend of the tottering Crown he has

on tho

man, or the

taken under his special care.
We have seen the career of greater men cut short
by intrigue in Spain of the most paltry descrip-
tion, and left to plunder her public coffers, in order
to escape starvation in a foreign land ; and if
O'DONNELL should be driven from office, the world
will be curious to know how he has made his exit ;
whether through the national treasury, or by a

less frequented road. There was a good deal of
money in the Government-till at Madrid on the
16th, and we are very anxious to know how much
of it will be forthcoming to pay the dividend on
Spanish stock, after QUEEN ISABELLA'S re-
actionary whims, and O'DosNELL's butcheries have
been paid for. If the 57,000,000 of reels should be
forthcoming, all well and good ; but, if they have
vanished, what will Europe think, and who
will be the greatest sufferer? England has
by., far the largest material and moral stake
in the peace and prosperity of Spain. She
is amongst our oldest Continental Allies, and
we are her largest creditor. We have no interest
in her dynasty, laws, or institutions, so long as
she is liberally and honestly governed. We have
nothing to force down the throat of the Spaniard,
nor to ask or expect from him, but that which
belongs to common honesty and his own happi-
ness and welfare.

The Spanish people know all this, and look
upon Great Britain as their most disinterested
and best friend. They know we sympathise with
them in all their adversities, and delight to hear
of their social prosperity and political ameliora-
tion. It is this confidence in the friendship of
England which has kept alive that jealousy which
has so often shown itself on the Continent, and
we trust in the present inatanee that nothing will
be done to gain an empty political ascendency at
a base Court, at the expense of the moral
and vast material interests we have in the
peace and prosperity of the Peninsula. The
street fight at Madrid, sanguinary
was, will not subvert the Constitution of Spain.
It may be magnified to intimidate the provinces, or

as it

its bloodshed may be disguised to encourage other
• .
towns to revolt ; but it matters not what colouring
is given to O'DONNELL'S deeds, his triumphs will
be short-lived, and their true character and objects
will out. The days of the FERDINAND, Camarilla,
and Inquisition regime have passed away for ever
in Spain. So valuable and great a country must
rise, and once more take its place amongst the
civilised nations of Europe. Her dormant powers
are as great as her former prestige ; and time will
show us that O'DONNELL, and the party to which
he professes to belong, are as impotent as the
subjugators and humiliators of the noble
Spaniards, as they are unequal to the task of
sustaining themselves or illeviating the sufferings
of their country. To-morrow may probably put
us in possession of some tidings from Saragossa,
which will enlighten the partisans of the Cama-
rills. in England ; but until we receive some

intelligence• from the actual scene of action, the
public should suspend their judgment, and not
part with Spanish stock too freely.

THE Abolition of Slavery having become a
leading question in the United States, and one
which is treated with greater moderation by the
South every year, it behoves all who are interested
in the production of Cotton to consider what the
practical effect of the slave's emancipation will be.
The immediate effect will be to put an end to com-
pulsory labour, to which we are mainly indebted for
the supply of the tropical products we now receive
from the North American Continent. We have no
data by which we can form an accurate opinion of
what the result of such a change would be, in the
production of slave grown commodities. The
manumission of the British Negroes has, after a
lapse of years, falsified the most gloomy predic-
tions, and such must be the inevitable issue of
Abolition in America. For the first year or two,
the released bondsmen may not toil with con.
stancy for existence, but when they find that
their labour is marketable, and that social inde-
pendence, and political freedom, are the offspring
of industry, they will not forsake the cultivation of
the soil which will give them bread, and render

,heni respectable as well as free citizens.

For the

future productiveness of the States we have no
reason, therefore, to be at all apprehensive. There
is a special Providence reserved to reward all great
and good acts, and it would be the basest of scep-
tical reasoning to doubt that the States would find
innumerable blessings in the restoration of their
millions of slaves to freedom.

If the plea of " necessity" for continuing slavery
in America can be raised, it must be in those
foreign countries which are dependent on the
slave holding States for a supply of cotton and
sugar. But much as we have cause to dread any
change in America with regard to the paramount
element of production, in the present nicely
balanced state of supply and demand, we
must wish the labours of the abolitionists
a hearty God's speed. We have long been made
to understand that commercial considerations
must give place to the necessities of the politician,
and we can scarcely show less deference to huma-
nity than we do to the chiefs of party. Let com-
merce, then, strike her pro-slavery standard at
once, and calmly consider what changes the eman-
cipation of the Negroes ii the States will bring
about. The first effect will be to increase the
doubt now felt as to the quantity of cotton which
will be available for exportation. Early frosts,
protracted droughts, alarming rains, and low and
flooded rivers will thenceforth sink into complete
insignificance, compared with the enquiry—will
the free blacks work ? ,The Negroes industry,
intelligence, and skill, as the tillers of the soil, are
the standards by which we must regulate the value
of free-grown cotton. Now, we are disposed to
give the African credit for a degree of good under-
standing and regard for that social status which can
only be attained by turning his labour to the best
account, which many will think even more than
fanciful.

We will, however, venture to predict, that in the
first year of abolition, the falling off in the
production of Cotton will not exceed one-third of
the present erop, and as the prices of that article
would advance in proportion to the decrease in
production, the States would certainly lose nothing
by the transition. England would be the greatest
loser by republican purification. We should have
to turn on a sudden to some other country, for,
probably, 700,000 or 800,000 bales of Cotton. This
is the certainty which awaits us, let American
abolition come when it may ; and what aro we
doing to fill up this jeopardous falling off in supply,
when it comes, and to feed that extraordinary ratio
of increase in consumption, which we have often
noticed? No changes can take place in the relations
of labour and capital in America, which will not
affect the market price of her produce in this court-
try. And when we see a candidate for the Presi-
dency of the United States going to the hustings as
an Abolitionist, as Colonel FREMONT really is, it is
high time that we looked a little a-head on a sub-
ject of such transcendant importance. We cannot
depend on India for the next ten or twenty years
for the increased supplies we require, we have
no trade organised with Africa which holds out a
hope of immediate release from the quarter where
cotton is most abundant, and where it may be had
at a comparatively nominal cost. And whence we
are to look for the large and increasing supplies
we shall want within a very few years is a matter

which cannot be too seriously considered, even if
slavery in the States should be tolerated for any

length of time