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

GROWTH OF COTTON IN INDIA.

It is a matter of satisfaction that Lord Stanley
recognises the importance of Indian cotton to
English prosperity. Now that we are 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
their true value. If, for instance, we misapprehend
the conditions 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 will show how this deficiency is felt. Northern
capital sustains such public enterprises as exist ;
and the acutest jealousy has not enabled the planter
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-
nex* 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-
rially to affect the question of cotton supply. It is
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 every
facility for sending us their produce by rail 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 eommotionon
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 sec 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 is more or less
a slave-breeding one; and the killing-off, or
" using-up " of slaves in the rice swamps
of Southi 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, tken,
the slaves dio off fast in South Carolina; and on

the other, they increase rapidly, through an ex-
tensive concubinages The result is one with which
we have a practical concern. The total population of
the State is 668,Z07 ; and the majority of the slave
population over the free is already 101,461, or
nearly a sixth ; while the births in that class are 3
to lof the free inhabitants. The excess of deaths
among the slaves is 5,858 ; while the excess of
births is 9,564. The anxious question is now asked,
what will be the condition of the State after another
thirty years ? Here is no increase of white popu-
lation in the last thirty—the deaths nearly equalling
the births, the small surplus always wandering
a way from its unprosperous birthplace; and mean-
time the black element—which is the slave element,
for there are no free blacks—steadily and rapidly
encroaching upon the free. Now we see why there
is such fierce opposition of opinion on the spot
about the reopening °tithe African slave trade. A
country-bred, narrow, selfish proprietor, who knows
only that the slaves in the market are far too dear
for a man with a declining estate and insufficient
capital, seizes upon the idea of importing savages
cheap ; and he bestirs himself to get the thing
talked up at Charleston, and even at Washington.
Wiser men, more conversant with affairs, and more
awake to the perils of the State, see that it will be
more than they and their sons can do ro go on as
they are, and to extricate themselves safely from
their perilsi and that it would be immediate de-
struction to introduce native Africans among a slave
population already nearly one-third more numerous
than the free race. The recent discussion in the
Legislature is distinguished by an earnestness any which indicate the gravity of the case.
When yep remember that the same contra-
tween the prospeVs of free and laN-c labour is
coming conspicuous through the whole range ot,the.
States we shall admit that it would be rash in the
extreme to depend for our cotton supply on a coun-
try already so disturbed in its industrial area, and
so certainly destined to go through a most trying
revolution in the conditions of labour. Meantime,
the exhortations offered to South Carolina by sister
States are strong and clear—to encourage the white
element and repress the black—to invite free immi-
grants and get rid of slaves with all convenient
speed. We know that this cannot be done. We
know that free and slave labour cannot exist face
to face. It is not our province to foretel what part
the South Carolina planters will take. We have
only to observe at present that their position and
circumstances are something very unlike what the
Times sets forth, and to take early care to secure a
supply of cotton for our own needs, which shall
prevent our being too much affected by. any con-
vulsions which may occur in the industrial system
of the Southern States of America.—Daily News.