The Sun.
London, England, 1862-05-24 00:00:00

STATE OF TRADE.

MANCHESTER, May 23.—1 a yarns we have had
rather more business on Wednesday and Thursday,
the sudden movement in the Liverpool market in-
ducing some few buyers to come forward rather
more freely. The operations were to supply orders
which had been lying over mostly, and were not
considerable, but they gave some encouragement,
and spinners have been endeavouring to-day to fol-
low the rise in cotton at Liverpool by asking higher
prices. The attempt, however, has been to some ex-
tent a failure. Buyers show a want of confidence in
the maintenance of present rates, and the higher
quotations have checked business. There has been
very little business effected to-day, but spinners are
firmer, and there is less irregularitythan on Tuesday.
The same in cloth as in yarns, manufacturers have
been asking 3d to 6d per piece more in consequence
of the rise in cotton, but agents and sellers generally
have been unable to obtain the advance. During
Wednesday and yesterday a little more business was
done at the turn in favour of sellers,but the improve-
ment has disappeared to-day, and there is but little
doing. It will have been observed that for some
time past merchants have abstained a good deal from
buying in cloth, and mostly from a distrust in the
current range of prices, and that the nearer affairs
between the Transatlantic belligerents have appeared
to approach a crisis the greater has been their cau-
tion. The question now naturally arises, and cannot
perhaps yet bo answered even approximately—
What should be a tolerable safe basis on which to
found transactions ? No one expects that cotton
will come down to the average prices ruling a few
years ago, though there are people in business ex-
travagant enough to fix their calculations of the
amount of cotton stored in America as high as four
millions of bales, and others who go to quite as
opposite an extreme. But the present is an excep-
tional position, and in this, as in everything con-
nected with the American struggle, there is no-
thing in our experience to guide us. Most of the
public as well as private sources of information as
to the probable quantity to come forward are tainted
and untrustworthy. In ordinary times the Southern
cotton interest, in common with American people
generally, were always fertile beyond any other in
the world in inventing reports which served to pro-
mote speculation and run up the prices of their
staple ; and rumours of " frosts," " the boll," the
" wire worm," " floods," and " droughts," have
urged thousands of speculators to loss or ruin at
Liverpool, and have been repeated till they are
stale. The latest accounts now to hand include
advices from Louisville, which some regard as a
fine illustration of the "ruling passion, strong in
death," for they state that after the fall of New
Orleans the cotton plantations all the way from that
city to Memphis were ablaze, and on the faith of
that report prices at Liverpool went up nearly ld.
per pound the other day. Many people here are
incredulous, for they say it happens to be a line of
country not remarkable for its cotton plantations
either as to number or extent, and they are doubt-
ful of the determination of planters to sacrifice their
crops for patriotism when at the same time they are
taking such pains to run up the prises in foreign
markets, and are so intent on increasing the value
of the stock at home. As to the destruction of
10,000 or 11,000 bales at New Orleans, that is a
small matter, and may be set beside the ordinary
losses by fire and at sea, which never create much
sensation. After all Europe has been half idle,and
abstaining from using their cotton so long, what
would be the destruction of half-a-million or a
million bales ? There have been no reliable ac-
counts of the destruction of cotton to shake the
belief here that there will be a very large amount
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and every thing else must naturally give way. The
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armies is English, Irish, Scotch, and German, and
that this item has been exaggerated. But there is
another question, " Will there ever be anything like
a full supply of cotton again for our mills from
America, now that thousands of negroes have
escaped from the plantations, or are receiving their
freedom ?" We do not know yet how far the prin-
ciple of emancipation may be carried, nor how far
the Southern States may yet have to work out,

under laws of freedom, the problem we have had to
solve in our own sugar plantations in the West
Indies. Will the negroes in a state of freedom
prove sufficiently industrious to grow us large and
increasing supplies? may yet be a question to
determine. These are questions which may take
long to settle ; but, at all events, everything seems
to point at present to obstructions in the way of
trade, however soon the ports may be opened—to
frequent and serious fluctuations in prices—and to
much doubt whether (except in case of panic or un-
due alarm) we shall for many years over COs prices
down to the average of ordinary years;