The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1860-02-02
SOUTHERN PROSPERITY AND SOUTH
ERN POLITICS.
The Boston Trdreller remarks (:

The Boston Irdreller remarks
"Of all people in the world, the shareholders
of the South have been in their business and ia
their pecuniary profits the most successful.
Nothing like the magnitude of their large and
continually increasing gains is known in the
history of commerce and agriculture. The out
turn of the cotton crop the present year will be
enormous and that, too, after having had last
year the largest crop ever before known. The
price at which it sells is very high, and the de-
mand takes off the product as fast as it can be
carried to market, while the Northern ships are
taking it to market, as they will find at the
close of the season, for less than the actual cost
of transportation, as no return freights which
will pay can be had. There is not much dan.
ger of disunion on the part of the South under
such circumstances, for, with such palmy pros
perity, it is unnatural to find either Miniature
or ferocity."
Unluckily for the logic of the Traceller, the
Immature and ferocity" of the cotton-growers
increases with their profits, and their threats of
disunion go hand in hand with their. success
in planting. Whether their threats are serious,
or only designed to frighten the North out of
its opposition to the extension of slavery, is an
other question.
If the cotton growers knew which side their
bread is buttered, their large profits would be
a guaranty of good behaviour for nothing is
more certain than that disunion, if it were prac-
ticable, would be their undoing. A Southern
Confederacy would impose burdens upon the
people which they have never known within
the Union, and would, after all, be inadequate
to protect slavery against the insults and inter-
ventions of the great States of Europe and of
the North.
Kenneth Rayner said, in the Legislature of
North Carolina, eleven years ago, by way Of
dissuading that body from an ultra policy in
regard to slavery: Sir, the civilized world is
against u.s." When will the shareholders of the
South learn this truth? When will they learn
that the people of Europe are Thoroughbred
Abolitionists The Southern politicians make
great mistake when they assume that all the
commercial and manufacturing States of the
world will still the voice of conscience in order
to propitiate the cotton-growers. There can
be no necessity for such course. Cotton is a
great product-a great staple of commerce
but the manufacturers and consumers are no
more dependent upon it than the producers
and, indeed, no nation is so dependent upon the
manufacture as the Gulf States are upon the
growth of cotton. The whole cotton region
would be rendered bankrupt by the failure to
sell one crop, and the idea that Great Britain
or France must abandon their hostility to sla.
very, in order to induce the shareholders to sell
an article which they must sell or become
bankrupts, is simply childish absurdity. It ;s
the very error of the moon
The law which compels the planters to grow
and to sell cotton to anybody who will buy, is
as imperative as that which constrains the slave
to delve, or to follow the pillow. Indeed, the
master has not even the poor privilege of run
ming away, which the slave sometimes finds an
opportunity to exercise.
Out of the Union, the South, as we have often
said, would be the weakest country in the world,
because one-third of its population, dispersed
throughout its broad surface, are alien enemies,
with no rights which the laws or customs of
society respect, and no amor patrie. The