The Sun.
London, England, 1861-08-08 00:00:00

of the world; they must have it. •I meet many
asking about the blockade. I cannot to-day tell
you how the blockade is to be raised ; but there is
one thing certain, in some way or other it will be
obliged to be raised, or there will be revolution in
Europe. There will be starvation there. Our
cotton is the clement that will do it. Steam is
powerful ; but steam is far short in its power to
the tremendous power of cotton. If you look out
upon the ocean to-day and inquire into the secret
agency of commerce, you will find that it is cotton
that drives it, and the spindles and looms. From
those in your own State to the remotest quarter of
the globe, it is this element of cotton that drives
them, and it is this great staple which is the tre-
mendous lever by which we can work out our des-
tiny under PROVIDENCE, I trust, against four
hundred thousand, or against four times four hun-
dred thousand."

And thus are these poor people beguiled with
the notion that cotton will constrain all the world
to support their cause. How little they
imagine
that the permanent interest of England is to see
the American cotton supply stopped for several
years to come Not only do her statesmen desire
to render negro slavery useless to the slaveholder,
and thus to hasten its abolition ; but they see in
the cessation of the American cotton supply but
a very temporary difficulty, with the prospect of a
lasting benefit to the great colony for whose im-
provement we are in every sense responsible. Al-
ready the increased supplies of cotton from Surat
have been sufficient to keep the stock of cotton from
any serious diminution. We have a years supply
now in hand, and by the time that is exhausted we
shall be obtaining large supplies from every quar-
ter. Just some such pressure as the failure of the
enormous slave-grown American supply is needed
to give India, Jamaica, and other smaller places,
the necessary impulse. If the war and blockade
do but last long enough we shall never again be
dependent on the slaveholder for our supply of
cotton. Happily the Board of Trade returns this
year show that in India we have found ample
compensation for the selfish and malignant
working of the MORRILL Tariff. America
is forcing us in every way to part com-
pany with her. She refuses us cotton through
her domestic quarrels, she refuses our manufactures
in mean jealousy of their superiority to her own.
She is prosecuting a domestic war for an object in
which no philanthropist can feel the least interest,
and that, too, when abolition of slavery would be
the best means both of present success and future
security—she is thus doing all she can to alienate
our commerce from her, and to chill our better
sympathies. Our only hope is that our interest in
our own colonies will increase as that in America
must diminish.

Already we have observed in regard to this last
session of Parliament, that it is likely to become
notable in Hansard, as the session of the Wednes-
day defeats. And now, before we have advanced
any further into the recess or long vacation, it may
be worth while recalling to mind, not the whole of
these Wednesday defeats, but just the pick of
them. To enumerate them all would, in truth, be
wearisome. But to give merely the " pick" of
them, as we here propose to do, very briefly, may
be useful, if only as a remembrancer. Occurring,
as the defeats of the session every one of them did,
on that significant day in the week—
Wednesday—it is obvious, of course, that they
were attributable to the intervention between the
Government side of the House and the Opposition,
of that particular class of members chiefly located
below the gangway, and known as the Indepen-
dents. But throughout the Session which has just
expired the peculiarity of the motions, in regard to
which these Wednesday defeats were experienced,
was this—they were invariably motions brought
forward by Independent members on the side of
the Government. For the Government—as the
event always turned out—they proved to be the
most inopportune motions imaginable ; demonstra-
tive upon division, in every instance, of the strength

of the Opposition, and of the weakness of their
confronting antagonists oa the Treasury benches.
Another noticeable peculiarity in respect to these
reiterated defeats on Wednesdays, yet deserves to
be particularised. And it is this—that in each
instance the Liberal motion brought forward was
spoken against and voted for by one or other, some-
times by very many, upon one occasion it will be
even seen by as many as nine, of the Cabinet Minis-
ters of the Crown. The late Home Secretary, the
present War Secretary, Sir GEORGE LEWIS, was
generally the spokesman ; and the right hon.
baronet usually stated in the most lucid manner
possible, and with an air of the most judicial impar-
tiality, all that could be said against the particular
motion then before the house by the most resolute
debater that might have been found among the ranks
of the Opposition. Voting immediately afterwards
generally with a cluster of his colleagues
in favour of the very proposition he had
immediately before the division been de-
claiming against as either impracticable or inop-
portune.

Mr. LOCKE KIN a's motion, for example, to begin
at the beginning, was the first in order of these
memorable Wednesday's defeats for our Liberal
Reformers, headed by our hot-blowing cold-blow-
ing Liberal-Reforming Government. It was the
motion, as every reformer in the land knows full
well, for extending the county franchise to £lO
householders. And it was defeated by a clear
majorityioi of
ss
terof 28 in a particularly large house, a
house
468—no letshse than Nine of the Cabinet
Next came Mr. EDWARD BAINES'S motion for the
extension of the borough franchise to £6. And
here the majority,the clearmajority, was yet larger.
It was no less than 52—with six of the Cabinet
Ministers again in the minority.
Afterwards there came—leading off the Church
questions—Mr. DILLWYN'S Trustees of Charities
Bill, which was defeated, in its turn, almost, as one
might say, as a matter of course, by a clear majority
of 29 in committee. Here, it is true, there was but
ene Cabinet Minister whose name figured in
in the minority, but with him had filed out into
the lobby two of the Government whips—just to
keep him in countenance.
Later on Sir SAMUEL MORTON PETO'S Burial
Grounds Bill was defeated by a clear majority of 46
—with four of the Cabinet Ministers again trooping
off with the rank and file of the defeated.

Finally, and to crown all, there was the memor-
able " tie," the "tie " of the Session—in regard
to which that rarely used casting vote of the
Speaker was just for once called into requisition.
This, as few are likely to have as yet
forgotten, was in regard to Sir JOHN TRE-
LAWNY'S Bill for the Abolition of Church
Rates—a bill the second reading of which had been
carried by the very same majority that secured the
triumph of Mr. GLADSTONE'S Budget—a majority
identical with the number of Ministers in the
Cabinet—i.e., Fifteen. Successful upon the
division for the second reading, Sir JOHN
TRELAWNY'S bill, it will be borne in
mind, upon the occasion of its coming on for the
third reading at another Wednesday's sitting—the
i Wednesday of all the 'Wednesdays I—brought about I