The Northern Daily Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1857-02-02 00:00:00

THE FUTURE OF COTTON.

The future of cotton ! It is impossible to conceive the
full force, and scope, and sweep of these few words. The
mind is not so wide as to grasp the actual power, or so
far-reaching as to compass the possibilities of cotton, the
dominion of which swells grandly into all the time to come.
It is true, commerce is called " King ; " but cotton confers
the crown and sceptre, and is the power behind the throne
greater than the throne itself. This relation it can always
maintain if it is true to itself. Its ministers should be as
circumspect as bold, as energetic as prescient. I's great
army in the South should not be permitted to diminish,
hut should be enlarged pari passe, as new fields of conquest
are opened. But if the present power of cotton is great,
and its future possibilities still greater, there are numerous
adverse influences also, that threaten to subvert its
empire and make its grandeur a thing that was. These
influencies are mainly, if not entirely, political in their
origin, and, strange to say, are not. directed against the
cotton interest of the United States from a foreign source
alone, but have their root even in the Federal constitution,
and are not without nurture even in the South. The
Federal influences to which we refer, flow mainly from two
restrictions—one upon the cotton trade in the guise of the
tariff, and the other upon cotton production in the shape
of the act of Congress, prohibiting the introduce:eu
black labourers required in cultivation of cotton according
to the law of supply and demand. We propose to
consider the latter prohibition only in connection with
the future of cotton, and its commercial and political
relations. The unjust exactions of the former are too well
known by every intelligent Southerner to require argu-
ment here. Let us look at facts and figures. From 1845
to 18551 the the average rate of increase as regards the
production of cotton was about 9 per cent. per annum
(so sound statistical authority informs us). and as regards
consumption about 16 per cent. If these ratios continue
for the next ten years—that is, from 1855 to 1865, according
to the same authority there will be an average annual
deficit of about 476,000 bales. We see in ten years that
the increasing demand, at the above rates, will call for a
total increase of 160 per cent. in the production, of which
the latter will furnish only 90 per cent. How is
this disparity to be overcome—a disparity that
will be attended by the :most serious calamities
to the commercial and industrial classes, unless
counteracted by a commensurate increase in the pro-
duction of cotton, or the substitution of some equivalent in
trade and manufacture ? We are told that the East. India
experiment of England in the culture of cotton is a failure,
and that the African experiment of France will be
equally unsuccessful. We are told that of he four millions
and odd bales of cotton produced in the world, our South-
ern cotton.growing States furnish over three fourths, and
that this ratio they can not only maintain but increase in
future. We are told that of 400,000,00:1 acres of our
cotton lands only 28,000,000 are in cultivation; and that
of 3,500,000 slaves only about one sixth are employed in
producing cotton. Let us look at facts and figures again.
We have an abundance of land, it is true, but land is
nothing without suitable labour, Have we a sufficiency of
such labour in the South ? We will see. It is not true that
but one sixth of the slaves are employed in the cultivation
of cotton. The number of slaves in the South actually
qualified for field work i 9 not more, probably, than
1,600,000, and more than one-third of these are already
employed in cultivating cotton. Suppose, under the
stimulus of high prices, the diversion of slave labour from
other branches of agriculture is sufficient to enable the
production to keep pace with the demand—that is to
increase at the rate of 16 per cent. per annum—in ten
years, or 12 at least, allowing the natural increase of
slavery to be 3 per cent per annum, all the available slave
labour in the South would be exhausted. What then?
The increase in proportion would be arrested, but the
increasing demand would continue. And what after
this? A great problem would be presented, and on its
solution would depend not only the future of cotton but
the fate, political and commercial, of the South.
Nature is bountiful and provident. Her vegetable riches
and agricultural resources are not exhausted, if, indeed,
they are exhaustible. Man is ingenioes, necessity makes
him inventive. If cotton fails to supply the wants of
commerce and feed the millions who subsist by manufac.
tures, then the earth will be ransacked through all its
recesses. Art will toil night and day, science will keep
ceaseless watch, until the deficit of cotton is restored or an
equivalent staple is discovered. The project of restraining '
the production of cotton within a given limit, in order to
control the price at a very high standard, if seriously
conceived and attempted, would defeat itself. But what
would be the political effect of the concentration of the
slave labour of the South, or the available portion of
it, on cotton, in order to keep pace with the demand for
10 or 12 years ? It would withdraw the most valuable
slaves from Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, and,
finally, Tennesee, and compress the great body of the
slave population within a circumscribed area, where
cotton could be grown most profitably, and with the
easiest access to market. A nornslaveholding population
of Northern labourers would come in to take the places of
the slaves withdrawn from the States mentioned ; the
Black Republican cancer would eat still further into their
borders, penetrate to their centres, and ultimately spread
from centre to circumference. Those States would
virtually cease to be Southern. Tire political strength of
the South would be reduced nearly half. She would have
to give up all hope of securing a balance of power in the
Union. Slavery, instead of being diffused in many hands,
would be confined to still fewer than at present, and the
cordon of an opposing non-slaveholding element would be
constantly narrowing around it. The same causes that
would deplete the border Slave States would al-o prevent
the expansion of slavery into new territory. The fortunes
of the institution would be staked on one article of
agriculture. The limit of production would be reached at
last. The diversion of commerce and manufacture to
other sources or to some equivalent of cotton, would
inevitably be made. The dream of a great cotton mono-
poly, the vision of the autocratic cotton bale, would
pass; the political power of the South would he gone;
her commercial grandeur would be no more; like the
glory of Babylon, all would vanish in the wind. The
South might at last awake to the ruinous policy she had
been pursuing, but it would then be too late—" too late !"
the eternal sentence written down by Fate against fools
and sluggards ! May Heaven forefend such a disastrous
consemarnation ! But what is to prevent it ? We know of
nothing that can avert the final calamity if the policy of
limitation and concentration which we sketch be persisted
in. The Black Republican cancer on the borders and the
unnatural congestion in the centre must at last do their
work. Paralysis will follow spasm; the death rattle will
soon be heard—and then an end. But let the principle of
free trade apply to the labour system of the South; let
its srenloyment, its direction, its growth, be governed by
the law of supply and demand. Lot it no longer be stig-
matised as piracy to maintain slavery by the same meant
which originated it. Let that opprobrious brand be taken
from the brow of the South. leet the sentimental hum-
buggery of Albert Pike and such like be scouted into
ridicule, and let rationalism and true philanthropy be
respected. pet us hear no more of the heinous immortality
of importing slaves from Africa, where their lives as well
as their labour belong to their masters, and they are
decimated as often as the yam crop falls; nor of the
perfect morality and legitimacy of purchasing them in
Virginia, where they are highly improved, and com-
fortable, and protected by humane laws, and transferring
them to a condition which is less caletilated to improve or
render happy. The King of Dahomey is a cruel and often
sanguinary master, and it is an absolute blessing to his
slaves when they are purchased by white owners ; but
Governor Wise is a chivalrous gentleman and a lenient
master..and we doubt much if one of his black servants
could find his position bettered by any transfer. Let such
be the programme for the South to work out in future,
and if wisely and boldly pursued we may feel assured of
her destiny in all its fulness. Her cornucopia will never
fail'; her might will never pass like the glory Babylon.
She B ylon.
She will not sit fcr,•saken amid the ruins of
a
her magnifi-

JR. CAMERON, CHRONOMETER MAKER and
. OpnciaN, 54, South Castle•oreet, Liverpool.
MARINE CHRONOMETERS ON SA LE. or HIRE. SEXTANTS,
QUADRANTS, TELESCOPES, BAROM E fERS, CHARTS, &c.

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TIT E c 00K S
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ABRAHAMSON BROTHERS.

PA—No connection with any other shop in England.

FOLEY'S AMERICAS GOLD PENS.—Charles
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