The Sun.
London, England, 1859-02-18 00:00:00

WATERFORD AND LIMERICK.

SOUTH YORKSHIRE.
The report states that the gross receipts during
the half-year ending the alst of December last
amounted to £72,910 in connection with the rail-
way
added to theb
al
and navigation,ao ee andf£2l7 the expenditure to
brought from
£33,829, leaving a balance of £39,072, Which,
preceding half-year, made a total sum of V 9 the
,289.

The report of the directors of this company states
that the traffic receipts for the half-year eliding the
31st of December last, amounted to £31,854, the
working expenses to £12,187, and the net balance to
X 19,667, being X 1,680 more than for the same half of
1857. The total income for the past half•year
amounted to £32,267, and the expenditure, includ-
ing law costs and renewal of engines, to £12,851.
After making provision for interest on loans and
preference shares, a balance of £3,083 remained.
A dividend at the rate of £1 per cent. per annum
would absorb £2,509, and leave £573 for the next
account.

GROWTH OF COTTON IN INDIA.

It is a matter of satisfaction that I,ard Stanley
recognises the importance of IndiMi cotton to
English prosperity.- Now that we Aro about to
hear what he has to say and propose, it is of the
utmost consequence that the essential elements of
the case should be understood• and estimated at
tiwir true value. If, for instance, we misapprehend
Iliaonditions in regard to American cotton, and
entertain groundless expectations of a permanent
supply from other countries than India, we shall
make mistakes in regard to the Indian case. The
Times, while explaining the importance of opening
new sources of supply, has presented a picture of
American cotton-growing so thoroughly erroneous
that it must be corrected before we can be in a
position to estimate our need of an Indian supply.
The Times explains well the essential importance
of our having plenty of cotton at command and in
store—the subsistence of millions of our country-
men depending on it no less than a sufficiency of
corn. But, in proceeding to show why the cotton
of the United .States is, and always will be, our
main reliance, the writer seems to be actually
unaware of any change of circumstances in the
cotton•producing States which can affect their pro-
duction and commerce. The picture would not
have been a true one ten or twenty years ago.
Now it is perfectly untrue—at the very moment
when mistake is practically dangerous in a high
degree.
The Times says that the American planters have
a great advantage over other cotton producers in
the excellence of the handling of the cotton. This
is true. It is their one distinctive advantage. Long
experience, constant practice, and the best gins in
existence give them the preference in the market;
and it requires a long course of folly on their part
to annul such a privilege. Beyond this, the account
of their qualification in the Times is illusory. The
boundless extent of fertile soil, the abundant capi-
tal, the agricultural improvements, the perpetual
supply of trained labour, do not exist, or are on the
decline. The crumbling plantation houses and
degenerating lands show the deficiency of capital.
The reports of the Southern Conventions of any
year *ill show how this deficiency is felt. Northern
capital sustains such public enterprises as exist ;
and the acutest jealousy has not enabled the plaiiter
class to run a single steamboat to Europe, as was
proposed in indignation at the " encroachments" of
New York. The amount raised was enough to pay
for coal and steaming an hour and a half, or a mile
and a half, we forget which, without reckoning the
vessel and her outfit. As to private business, it is
mainly Northern capital which sustains it too,
for the Southern estates are mortgaged, like
those in the West Indies before the days of
emancipation; and the mortgagees see their
security crumbling away, under the pressure
of debt, and the bad economy which attends
slave-labour. While whole states are sinking into
something like the barrenness of Virginia and
North Carolina, there is no opening for new plant-
ing elsewhere, as we are apt to suppose. It was so
once ; but it is not so now. When Texas was an-
nexed, we supposed there was no further limit to
the spread of Southern production ; whereas Texas
has proved to be itself the barrier. Beyond it ex-
tends a barren territory, a dry desert, where even
a railway is impracticable from the total deficiency
of water for several days' journey. Nothing grows
there, of course, and nobody lives there but a few
wandering Mexicans and half-castes, who offer a
safe refuge to escaping slaves. But the way in
which Texas is itself a bar is that free white labour
is gaining ground upon slavery there so as mate.-
It is
rially to affect the question of cotton supply
a pure good to us and the world that the German
settlers find it easy,. wholesome, and profitable to
grow cotton with their own hands ; and that they
are living on an area level for the most part or
slightly sloping to the sea, so as to afford ;ver y
facility for sending us their produce by rai and
steamer. But it must be remembered that this
suppression of slave labour by immigrant industry
must break up so much of the routine of the other
cotton-producing States as to occasion. great dis-
turbance in the supply. One indication of what
must ensue is afforded by the present commotion on
the subject of reviving the African slave trade.
It is worth while to give a moment's attention to
the latest account of the population of the leading
cotton State, in order to see what we have to expect
in a few years' time. While the fertile lands of
Texas are more and more taken up and tilled by
white immigrants, whose young children do more
good work than the costliest slaves, the condition of
South Carolina is this—according to the Report for
1857 just made to the Legislature. The white
population of the State has not increased for thirty
years; and the births among the blacks are three
to one of the whites. It is well understood that
the new generation are in large proportion
Mulatto, as every Slave State k more or less
a slave-breeding one ; and the killing-off, or
" using-up" •of slaves in the rice swamps
of South Carolina causes a higher mortality
than usual among the blacks, though not equal to
that of Louisiana, where the sugar crop is yet more
destructive of human life. On the one hand, tkcn,
the slaves die off fast in South Carolina; and nn