country, or any stake in its welfare, but must shudder at the idea of a great nation, like this, depending for its prosperity and resources on the precarious tenure of the prices in foreign markets, at a distance of three thousand miles? How many bankruptcies this catastrophe must have produced! what misery and desolation must it have spread abroad! how many families, with towering prospects, must it have humbled in the dust! what a diminution must it have created in our means of paying for those expensive and pernicious luxuries on which we blindly lavish our treasures!

And why, fellow-citizens, have we inflicted on ourselves this calamitous result? In order to purchase cambrics, and muslins, and gauzes, and mull mulls, and boglepores, and a hundred other articles with cramp names, a few cents per yard cheaper than our fellow-citizens could manufacture them! And hence we spread distress over the landexhaust the treasures, enfeeble the strength, and destroy the resources, of our country-sweep away three-fourths of the revenues of our planters-devote our merchants and our manufacturers to bankruptcy-and the labouring class of our citizens to idleness and its ruinous consequences! Is this the nineteenth century, which prides itself on its illumination? Is this the brotherly love we bear to those who are embarked in the same cause with us-who have every possible claim on our protection and kindness, and many of whom risked their lives, shed their blood, and spent their fortunes, to secure national independence, much of whose value depends on protection in the acquisition of property, of which they are bereft by a ruinous policy, discarded by all the nations of Christendom, except Spain, Portugal, and the United States?

We have hazarded a broad, unqualified assertion, that a due degree of encouragement to the cotton manufacture, wo d have secured a domestic market for so large a portion of the raw material, as to preserve what was exported from any material reduction of price abroad. As this is a cardinal point in the present question, we shall endeavour to establish our position so as to remove the doubts of the most sceptical.

In the year 1805, the whole of the cotton used in manu

Importation of Cotton into Great Britain.

215

factures, in the United States, was 1000 bags; in 1810, 10,000; and in 1815, 90,000.* Of course it follows, that the manufacture was not introduced to any considerable extent till after the year 1810. In the Marshals' returns of that year, the whole amount of the cotton, woollen, flax, hemp and silk manufactures, is stated at 41,000,000 of dollars. The cotton may be estimated at about 5 or 6 millions In the short space of five years, that is, in the year 1815, the consumption rose, as we have stated, to 90,000 bags, or 27,000,000 of pounds, nearly one-fourth of the whole produce of the United States in the most favourable year—and, let it be distinctly observed, that it was about one-third of the amount imported into Great Britain in any year, from 1802 to 1815, except three.

Total Importation of Cotton into Great Britain.

Thus it appears that the average importation of Great Britain for fourteen consecutive years was 294,000 bags, of which a very considerable portion must have been exported. We have no data to ascertain the quantity. But by a document now before us, it appears, that the exportation in 1818, was nearly 60,000 bags. If, therefore, we suppose that there was only half that quantity exported in each of those years, it follows, that the manufacturers of the United States consumed in 1815, more than one-third of the cotton used in Great Britain in that year, or the average quantity for fourteen years!

This fact, striking in itself, acquires great additional force from various considerations connected with it, some of which we shall detail.

*Report of the Committee of Commerce and Manufactures. Weekly Register, Vol. IX. p. 448.

t Tench Coxe's Report, ii. 37. + Seybert, 92.

The manufacture in Great Britain was unremittingly fostered and protected by the government, by absolute prohibitions of calicoes; by prohibitory duties of 85 per cent. on cottons generally, which completely secured the home market; by drawbacks; and by every mode that ingenuity and sound policy could devise. It had likewise every advantage that could be afforded by most excellent machinery, long experience, enormous capitals, and by access to the markets of nearly the whole world.

What a contrast! Not much less than between a stripling half grown, and a sinewy Hercules possessed of all the energies of manhood. We were comparatively unskilful. Our machinery was to be created. The establishments were mostly commenced by persons brought up to pursuits wholly dissimilar, and generally with slender capitals. The manufactories were conducted often by very ignorant, and almost always by inexperienced artists. The duties on the rival articles, until the commencement of the war, were only 15 per cent. Yet under all these numerous and weighty disadvantages, the manufacture rose to such maturity in four or five years, as to supply the nation with all the cotton goods that it consumed during the war, except about four or five millions of prize and smuggled goods annually. To this degree of perfection it arose, without bounty, premium, drawback, or any assistance from government, except the double duties imposed for the sole and avowed purpose of meeting the exigencies of the treasury, and merely through the exclusion of foreign rivalship, by a war of two years and a half duration.

The amount of cotton goods manufactured in the United States in 1815, was 24,300,000 dollars.*

To this plain statement, we invite the calm and dispassionate attention of our fellow citizens. There can be no fairer mode of argument, than to infer what may be done, from what has been actually accomplished. And therefore we ask, whether, after such a progress made, under those discouraging circumstances, there can be a doubt, that with suitable encouragement the consumption would have kept pace with the production? that is to say, in order to simplify the question, whether, having increased the consumption in 10 years, ninety fold, viz. from 1000 bags, or 300,000 lbs. to 90,000 bags, or 27,000,000 lbs. we should

not be able in three or four years more to increase it from 27,000,000 to 100,000,000 lbs?

The rise in the price of our cottons in the British market, as stated from the price current of September 30, may lead our planters and merchants to hope that they will regain the ground they have lost, and thus lead to extensive speculations. This would probably prove a fatal error to hundreds of those who might be led astray by it, and exhibit another decisive proof of the insanity of a nation depending on contingent and fluctuating foreign markets, when it can create and secure an unfailing domestic one, subject to but slight variations.

The vital importance of the topic we here discuss, will justify us in submitting to our fellow citizens, a few strong extracts from the circulars of some of the most eminent Liverpool merchants, which bear decisive testimony to the correctness of the views we have given of this subject: "The "most remarkable increase of imports, has been in East "India cotton: and the stock of this description is consi"derably heavier than it was. But the consumption of it is "increasing very rapidly; being now very probably not less "than 1000 bales per week more than it was last year." Yates, Brothers, & Co. Liverpool, July 1, 1818.

"Of Tennessees we have a less favourable opinion. They "are more on a level with good Bengals, and middling Su"rats; and are likely to accompany them in any decline. "East India cotton, except Surats of a quality that is con"vertible to the same purposes as ordinary Boweds and "Orleans, must decline; as the very heavy imports are not "likely to be checked till the crop of 1817, and perhaps "not till that of 1818, is shipped. Surats still leave a profit; "though Bengals lose considerably. But Bengals will pro"bably decline in India, so as to meet the decline here, and "still continue to be grown and shipped." Yates, Brothers, & Co. Nov. 10, 1818.

"The use both of Bengal and Surat is become very con"siderable; and while there continues so great a relative "difference in price between them and the descriptions "with which they come more immediately in competition, "there seems good reason to apprehend that their use will "continue to extend." Cropper, Benson, & Co. Liverpool, 11th Month 30th, 1818.

"Our present heavy stock of East India cotton, which "will continue to increase for some time yet, and the fact

T

"that it is getting more into use by the spinners altering "their machinery for using it, on account of the very low "prices, will prevent any considerable advance on Aineri"can cotton for the greater part of the next year.” John Richardson, Liverpool, December 28th, 1818.

"The demand there now is for good Surat cotton, will "very seriously interfere with American cotton, particu"larly uplands of an inferior quality, and will have the ef"fect of depressing them in price." John Richardson, Jan. 1, 1819.

"From a review of the imports and stock at the end of "each year, it appears that there has been an increase in "1818 in the consumption of India of 26,000 bags; of Brazil "also some increase; but a decrease of American of about "12,000." Yates, Brothers & Co. Liverpool, Jan 2, 1819.

"Upland cotton, the leading article of import from the "United States, is likely to be much interfered with by "East India cotton, to the spinning of which many of our "mills are adapting their machinery, and many new ones are "building, solely calculated to consume it. There seem to be

no limits to the quantity that can be produced in that "country, and which is materially aided by the low price "of labour. During the first six months of the last year, they exported 100,000 bales more than they did the preceding "twelve months! Its extreme low price will force it into con"sumption, to the exclusion of other descriptions." W. & James Brown & Co. Liverpool, Jan. 14, 1819.

The following information is not only the most recent, but by far the most important. "The demand for cotton "during the whole of this month has been excessively "limited; and the sales of all kinds do not exceed 18.000 "bags, at a reduction, in that period, upon upland of Id. and "New Orleans of d. per lb. We quote Sea Island, ordinary "to middling 26d. to 29d.; fair to good 30d. to 34d; and "fine 36d. to 38d. per lb. The small stock in this market "is held by very few persons; and these prices are requi"red, although at the present moment no sales could be ef"fected at these rates; and some of the holders evince an "anxiety to sell. The importers of Alabama cotton have "endeavoured to establish a distinction between this de"scription and Tennessee, in favour of the former: but "both kinds are in the highest disrepute, and cannot be va"lued at more than 12d. to 12 d. per lb. East India cotton "is not quoted lower. But we think the latest sales, both of