With the progress of trade the price of the middling cotton of America for the last fifteen years has varied at Liverpool from fourpence to ninepence per pound, and now stands at seven and a halfpence by the last quotations.  As the stock accumulates or the sale of goods is checked, the price naturally declines, and a check is given to production.  As the stock declines or goods advance, an impetus is given to prices, the culture is extended, and cotton flows in from Egypt and India.  When the cotton of Bombay commands more than fivepence per pound at Liverpool, it flows in a strong current from India to Manchester.  Should the export-duty be levied in the Cotton States, it may well be presumed that the burden will fall principally upon the planter, and give an additional stimulus to the growth of India, and a new incentive to the British Government to start the culture in other colonies.

The gentlemen of the South sometimes imagine that Old England, as well as New England, is entirely dependent upon cotton, and that society there would be disintegrated, if the crop in the Cotton States should be withheld for a single year.  But the Northern mills have usually six months’ supply; and Great Britain holds upon an average enough for three months in her ports, for two months at her mills, and as much more upon the ocean.  The English spinner, too, can not only reduce his time one-fourth without stopping, but can reduce his consumption another fourth by raising his numbers and increasing the fineness of his cloth; and as he draws one-fourth of his supply from other countries, it is obvious that he might hold out for nearly two years without a bale from America.

Could the cotton-planter hold out any longer?  Let it not be forgotten that the Embargo was voted to bring England to terms by withholding rice, cotton, wheat, and naval stores, but proved a signal failure.  We reaped from it no harvests, and were put back by it at least six years in our national progress; while England enjoyed the carrying-trade of the world, which we had abandoned, and drew her supplies from Russia and India while our crops perished in our own warehouses.

The vast export of cotton goods from Great Britain to India has now liberated at least half a million bales of cotton for the supply of England in addition to what India previously furnished; and as the export of goods to India and China continues to increase, the surplus of cotton must rise with it.  But India is able to treble her production.  It is true that the staple of her cotton suffers from the dry summers, that her land is but half tilled by ploughs consisting of a simple beam of wood with two prongs and a single handle, that she has been destitute of roads and facilities for transportation, that her lands are held at oppressive rents, that American planters there have failed to make good cotton, and that the annual yield of her soil is as small as that of the exhausted fields of South Carolina.  But still she produces at least four million bales of cotton, and great changes are now in progress:  railways are pervading the country; canals are being dug for irrigating, and irrigation quadruples the crop, while it improves the staple; and the diversion of a few districts from the ordinary crops, with improved tillage, will increase the production to an indefinite extent.