The Sun.
London, England, 1847-06-23 00:00:00

JUNE 23, 1847.

PRICE SD•

its quality, I had no idea that it would be found to be
of so superior a quality as it was proved on examina-
tion in Glasgow. I had been three times in the
Brazils, both at Pernambuco and at Rio Janeiro,
where I had seen it growing also, and where it is
grown for exportation, and I had also been in Charles-
ton, South Carolina, one of the principal cotton-
growing states of America. Neither is the compara-
tive cost of free labour a subject which I have not
considered, in reference to this question, or on which
lam unqualified to offer an opinion. I have seen
slavery, and considered it well, both in the United
States and the Brazils, and it is, after a careful con-
sideration of the whole subject, that I have come to
the conclusion, that with European free labour—that
is, with plenty of virtuous and industrious people, of
the humbler or working classes, from this country,
we should not only be able to produce a much sup-
rior article to the cotton of the Brazils in North-
Eastern Australia, but even to undersell " Jonathan
and his niggers." and thereby to drive him eventually
out of your market till he should mend his manner;.
In short, I am firmly persuaded, that " the heaviest
blow and the greatest discouragement" that negro
slavery in America is destined, by Divine Providence,
to sustain, will be experienced from the application
of European free labour to the growth of cotton, and
other tropical produce, in North-Eastern Australia.
Anticipating, then, as I do with perfect confidence,
that this object will very soon be regarded as one of
national interest and importance, and that it will call
forth at once great national effort for its accomplish-
ment, I am desirous on many accounts, and not
merely as a native of the West of Scotland, and an
alumnus of the University of Glasgow, that that great
commercial and manufacturing city should take the
lead, and assume the initiation in the matter. For,
if the manufacturing city of Manchester took the
lead in that memorable agitation which issued in entire
freedom of trade in the great staff of life, it ap-
pears to me that it would be peculiarly fitting, as well
as highly desirable for the city of Glasgow (which is
surely not inferior to Manchester, either in point of
intelligence and enterprise, or of public spirit and an
enlightened interest in the national welfare), to as-
sume the initiation in a somewhat similar agitation—
an agitation which I have no hesitation in adding,
promises equally important, equally splendid results.
For success in the object and agitation, I contemplate,
would not only ensure a future supply, to any
conceivable extent, of the raw material, for our
great national manufactures, independently alto-
gether of slave labour, either in North or in South
America, and thereby give a wonderful additional
impulse to British commerce, but it would also in-
sure the conveyance out and progressive settlement
in a land of plenty, free of all cost eventually to this
country, of thousands and tens of thousands of your
destitute population, who are now a burden to so-
ciety at home, but who would there become valuable
consumers of your manufactured produce abroad ;
and I am greatly mistaken if it would not tend, more
directly and more effectually than all the Abolitionist
and Evangelical agitations in Britain, to give ulti-
mate freedom to the American slave. For I confess,
that so long as America continues the principal source
of the supply of cotton for your factories, I have no
hope, from what I saw myself in that country, of the
extinction of slavery in America. Only let us be able
to undersell Jonathan, however, from Australia,
which I maintain is perfectly practicable, by means
of European free labour, not only in the article of
cotton, but in other articles of tropical produce in
America, and slavery will be extinguished as a matter
of course, as being no longer either profitable or re-
munerative.
With a view to bring this whole matter under the
consideration of the public generally, and especially
of gentlemen engaged in the cotton trade, I propose
to deliver two lectures on the points I have
enumerated above in the city of Glasgow ; and,
if a few gentlemen should be appointed to make
further inquiries on the subject, and to report,
I should be most willing to submit to any subse-
quent interrogation they might propose, with a view
to develope the real capabilities of the tract of country
I refer to, and the practicabilities of employing Eu-
ropean labour to any considerable extent in the culti-
vation of cotton within its borders. And if the mer-
chants and manufacturers of Glasgow should only
take the lead in this matter, so as to form some
organisation for action and agitation on the subject,
I am confident that immediate and zealous co-opera-
tion would forthwith be afforded to the carrying out
of whatever measures might be deemed practicable
and advisable in Manchester and the other manufac-
turing cities and towns of England, and that her
Majesty's Government would, at the same time,
moat willingly afford every facility that could pos-
sibly be desired.
As a further inducement to take up this subject, I
would remind your mercantile readers, that while
the vast population of the Russian Empire consumes
British produce and manufactures at the rate of only
71d. per head annually, every man, woman, and
child in our great colony of New South Wales con-
sumes such produce and manufactures annually to the
extent of 71. 10s. per head. In short, we are excel-
lent customers.
I am well aware that anything new is usually re-
garded with suspicion and distrust. It is not yet
fifty years, however, since the project of growing
sheep's wool in Australia was submitted to the con-
sideration of the public in this country, and I need not
inform your readers how magnificently the promise
which was then given on behalf of our colony has
since been fulfilled, notwithstanding the distrust and
incredulity with which it was at first received. Now,
lam quite confident from what I have seen myself,
that our soil and climate are equally adapted to the
production of cotton wool of superior quality; and as
the growth of cotton wool can be extended by means
of an industrious population much faster than that of
sheep's wool, I anticipate from the experiment much
speedier and far more magnificent results. It is
well known, for example, that the cotton crop in
America is not unfrequently destroyed by un-
seasonable frosts; but in the tract of country
in Australia to which I have been directing
attention, frosts are never severe enough to hurt
the vegetation. While, therefore, the cotton plant in
America is an annual, and must be renewed from
seed every year, it is perennial with us, as it is also
I in India and in Egypt, and, consequently, much less
labour is required for its cultivation. There is no
more difficulty, indeed, in the matter, than there is in
the cultivation of a gooseberry bush ; for the separa-
tion of the cotton from the seeds is a mechanical
process, that has no connexion withjthe cultivation of
the plant, and that ought, decidedly, to be carried on
by a different class of people altogether from the
mere cultivators, which, I am happy to add, the
great extent of water communication in North-
Eastern Australia would afford the ampliest facilities
of doing. In further proof of the superior mildness
of our Australian climate, as compared with
that of the United States, and of its consequent
adaptation to the growth of :cthe cotton plant
(which is decidedly a native), I shall only add,
that when at Charleston in the year 1840, I ascer-
tained of the warmer regions of the temperate, ra-
ther than of the torrid zone, and which appears not
to like extremes either of heat or of cold, that the
orange could not be grown either in that vicinity,
which is in 32 deg. north latitude, or in Savannah,
or in New Orleans, which are in about 30 deg.
north, considerably nearer the equator, on account
of the extreme severity of the American winter even
in these comparative low latitudes ; but the orange
grows freely in the neighbourhood of Sydney, in
New South Wales, in latitude 34 deg. south ; and,
if I am not mistaken, it has been grown, and suc-
cessfully, two degrees farther to the southward.
I am, Sir, your most obedient servant,
JOHN DUNMORE LANG, D.D.
Senior Master ofhe Presbyterian Chuch, and
Member of the Legislative Council r
of New
South Wales.