STATES.

Entire crop of the season of 1849, taken from the census returns.

The cotton crop of the United States now amounts to upwards of seven-tenths of all the cotton produced in the world. The quantity annually exported from the United States is about eight-tenths of the aggregate of all exported by all countries.

The following estimates, compiled from the best authorities, sustain these statements:

Cotton crop of the world, of 1851; and exports of all countries in 1852.

The first column of the above states all that is estimated to be consumed, in the countries named, in "household" manufactures and for various domestic uses, as well as that used in their home cotton manufactories, and likewise all exported to other countries. In the second column is estimated the exports to contiguous foreign countries for manufacture, as well as the exports to Europe, &c. In the East Indies such exportations, to contiguous countries, is not less than the amount stated. An English writer, in 1824, (Smither's History of Liverpool, p. 116,) says, with respect to China, that cotton and cotton manufactures are "estimated to employ, directly and indirectly, nearly ninetenths of the immense population of that country. A very large proportion of what is made is used for internal consumption, particularly the very finest and most costly fabrics. Nankeens and chintzes form the principal articles of their exportations."

This estimate, it is believed, overrates the number of persons so employed. One-tenth of the 350,000,000 there may be so employed, but not more. The United States exported, in 1852, upwards of $2,200,000 of domestic cotton manufactures (coarse white muslins) to China. We formerly procured some nankeens from China; but our imports of cotton goods from thence are now comparatively nothing. The above estimate as to the crop in China is doubtless too small, but the production there is decreasing.

There is not now any serious cause for apprehension by the agricul tural, commercial, or manufacturing interests of the United States, of successful competition with the southern States of this confederacy, by any other country, in the production of cotton.

From the day our independence was recognised by Great Britain, till within a few years past, her leading statesmen, with but few ex

ceptions, used every effort and devoted every faculty and power to diminish and prevent all necessity for dependence, in any degree, by her capitalists, (having large and increasing investments in manufactures and commerce) upon any of the products of the United States. The younger Pitt-the most enlightened and sagacious, and therefore the most liberal statesman Great Britain has had in her councils within a century past, did not approve such policy towards us; but he was overruled. In Jay's treaty of 1794, as originally agreed to by the negotiators, it was attempted, by different provisions, to restrict us in the exportation to any part of the world, even in our own vessels, of our own raw cotton! Our negotiator, it seems, did not appreciate the future importance and value of this product to his own country, which had then recently embarked in its cultivation. British sagacity, however, not only foresaw it, but sought to stifle the enterprise in its infancy. These provisions were of course expunged from the treaty by the United States Senate, before that body would "advise and consent" to its "ratification." If the liberal and wise counsels of Mr. Pitt had been adopted and adhered to by Great Britain, she would have advanced in wealth and prosperity, and in all the true elements of strength, and power, and greatness, in a much greater degree than she has since 1783; and it would not have been any detriment to her that the consummation of the certain destiny of this country would thereby have been accelerated. We should not, as in former times, before the war of 1812, have had our commerce injured by open spoliations. That war would not have occurred. We should not have had, before and since the war, our agricultural and commercial interests fettered and crippled by her illiberal restrictions and regulations on the one hand, and by our countervailing legislation on the other. Until within a few years past, Great Britain has not relaxed her illiberal and selfish policy; and the cotton interests of the United States have seemed to be especial objects of her unceasing hostility. She has used every exertion, and availed herself of every means she possessed, to create competition and rivals to the southern States of this confederacy in the cultivation of cotton, and to relieve herself from any dependence upon those States for the means of employment for her working classes, in the manufacture of cotton, and in auxiliary avocations. She experimented in its cultivation, at great cost in her West India colonies, with the advantage of slave labor, until she abolished the institution of "domestic servitude" in those colonies, as to those who had been held as "slaves." She then tried "apprentice" labor, with still more unfavorable success. She tried the cultivation of cotton in every one of her numerous possessions in the different quarters of the globe, where the climate and soil allowed any expectation of a favorable result. She encouraged its cultivation in different countries, not politically connected with her. Every kind of labor has been employed in these experiments: free labor; Irish, Scotch, Anglo Saxon, and African; colonists, apprentices, coolies, Chinese,

*

A member of the English Parliament--ex-Lord-Chancellor Brougham, who was considered somewhat famous-in a speech respecting our cotton manufactories, soon after the war which ended in 1815, said: "It was well worth while to incur a loss upon the first exportation, in order, by the glut, to stifle, in the cradle, those rising manufactures in the United States which the war had forced into existence, contrary to the natural course of things."

convicts, and slaves; Christians and Pagans, civilized and savage. Of her efforts to induce its cultivation elsewhere than in this country, we had no right to complain. But of her illiberal restrictions and wrongs done to us, we had; and they engendered no little ill feeling towards her in this country. Her statesmen, since the war of 1812, have urged in justification of her courses, that they were to "counteract" the measures of the United States, at different times, affecting her commerce and manufactures unfavorably. The conduct of the government of the United States has, however, from the outset, always been solely defensive and countervailing. We have not been in any instance the first to adopt illiberal and injurious measures. We have been constrained in past times to enact and enforce laws, necessary in proper selfdefence, against her illiberality, not only antecedent to the war, but since. That different relations were created by measures adopted under the administration of that profound and able statesman, Mr. Peel, and that they now exist between the two countries, is because Great Britain felt that every attempt to embarrass, or fetter, or restrain, or otherwise injure the trade and commerce of this country, would certainly recoil upon herself. The futility of warring against the natural laws governing trade and commerce, and against advantages given by the superior adaptation of climate and soil, and experienced and effective (because united) labor for the production of an article like cotton, and the folly and presumption of any nation striving to establish for itself an exclusive and selfish monopoly or control of all things, is fully demonstrated in the former course of the British people towards It is, perhaps, best for her that her experiments in making cotton, to "root the Yankees out," have so signally failed; for the cotton crop of the United States is the main link connecting the two countries commercially; and if it is broken, the entire trade between them will soon become comparatively valueless to both.*

us.

And the efforts to induce to the production of cotton, to compete with the United States, have not been confined to Great Britain. France attempted it in Algeria, without favorable success. It has been tried by

* The following has been extracted from an article, very abusive and denunciatory of this country, and its institutions and people generally, contained in a recent number of "Blackwood's (Edinburgh) Magazine." The parts now italicised betray the feelings and motives of the author:

"In the year 1789, only one million pounds of cotton were grown in the United States; now, the produce amounts to about 1,500,000,000 of pounds! How great a stimulus this has proved to the employment of slave labor, by which it is raised, and to the rapid multiplication of the slaves themselves, can easily be imagined. The influence of the potato on the social, moral, and industrial character of the Irish people, has long been recognised among us. But the history of the cotton-plant shows how powerful a control an obscure plant may exer cise, not only over the social character of a people, but over their general material prosperity, their external political power, and their relations with the world at large. The cotton shrub, which seventy years ago was grown only in gardens as a curiosity, yields now to the United States an amount of exportable produce which, in the year ending with June, 1850, amounted to seventy-two millions of dollars, of which from thirty to forty millions were clear profit to the country. With its increased growth has sprung up that mercantile navy, which now waves its stripes and stars over every sea; and that foreign influence which has placed the internal peace -we may say the subsistence of millions in every manufacturing country in Europe, within the power of an oligarchy of planters. The new and growing commerce soon gave birth, likewise, in the free States themselves, to a large mercantile, manufacturing, and moneyed party, arhom self-interest has constantly inclined to support the views and policy of the southern States."

the Turkish Sultan, and a superintendent and intelligent and experienced slave laborers procured from the State of South Carolina, but the trial did not succeed profitably. It has been tried in different places, on the extensive shores of the Euxine, opened to the commerce of Christendom by the cannon of the allies at Navarino, in 1827; it has been tried in Mexico, in Central America, in the different republics of South America, and in the empire of Brazil; it has been tried in different parts of the East Indies, and in Africa; and the fact has been fully and conclusively tested and established, that the soils, seasons, climate, and labor of no country can successfully compete with those of that vast region of this confederacy which has been appropriately styled the "COTTON ZONE," in the raising of this product. It is proper, however, to state that many of the most intelligent cotton planters of that region insist that their now generally conceded superiority is not so much attributable to any radical difference of the soil or dissimilarity of the climate in that region, from those of several other countries in like latitudes, as it is to the advantages afforded by the aggregated and combined, and cheap, and reliable labor they derive from that patriarchal system of domestic servitude existing throughout the "Cotton Zone," and to the superior intelligence, and greater experience, and skill, and energy, of the American planter; and to the improved and constantly improving systems of cultivation pursued by them-the most affluent attending personally to his own crop.

The "Cotton Zone" extends from the Atlantic ocean to the Rio del Norte, and includes the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and those portions of the States of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas, that lie below 35° north latitude; and all of the State of Florida above the 27th parallel of north latitude; and all of the State of Texas between the Gulf of Mexico and the 34th parallel of north latitude. The region described is an area of upwards of four hundred and fifty thousand square miles; but large portions are mountainous, or covered with water, and in each State more than two-thirds, from various other causes, it has been estimated, is not adapted to the growing of cotton advantageously.

The annexed table shows the estimated cotton crop of each of the States mentioned that produced raw cotton for exportation in 1852; the number of agricultural laborers employed in the cultivation of cotton in each State; the estimated quantity in each State of lands now appropriated to the growing of cotton; and the quantity, not in cultivation in cotton, but that which may be advantageously applied to the growing of that product, when a further supply is needed; the number of agricultural laborers necessary to till such lands; and the probably attainable product of such land and labor.