But it is most satisfactory of all to know that the best of the British abolitionists are now acting, promptly and efficiently, in accordance with those views, and are determined to develop the resources of the British empire for the production of cotton by free labor.  The thing is practicable, and not of very difficult accomplishment.  It is furthermore absolutely essential to the success of the antislavery cause; for now the great practical leading argument for slavery is, Without slavery you can have no cotton, and cotton you must and will have.  The latest work that I have read in defence of slavery (Uncle Tom in Paris, Baltimore, 1854) says, (pp. 56-7,) “Of the cotton which supplies the wants of the civilized world, the south produces 86 per cent.; and without slave labor experience has shown that the cotton plant cannot be cultivated.”

How the matter is viewed by sagacious and practical minds in Britain, is clear from the following sentences, taken from the National Era:—­

“COTTON is KING.—­Charles Dickens, in a late number of his Household Words, after enumerating the striking facts of cotton, says,—­

“’Let any social or physical convulsion visit the United States, and England would feel the shock from Land’s End to John o’Groat’s.  The lives of nearly two millions of our countrymen are dependent upon the cotton crops of America; their destiny may be said, without any sort of hyperbole, to hang upon a thread.

“’Should any dire calamity befall the land of cotton, a thousand of our merchant ships would rot idly in dock; ten thousand mills must stop their busy looms, and two million mouths would starve for lack of food to feed them.’

“How many non-slaveholders elsewhere are thus interested in the products of slaves?  Is it not worthy the attention of genuine philanthropists to inquire whether cotton cannot be profitably cultivated by free labor?”

SOIREE AT WILLIS’S ROOMS—­MAY 25.

MR. JOSEPH STURGE took the chair, announcing that he did so in the absence of the Earl of Shaftesbury, who was prevented from attending.

It was announced that letters had been received from the Duke of Newcastle and the Earls of Carlisle and Shaftesbury, expressing their sympathy with the object of the meeting, and their regret at being unable to attend.

The Secretary, SAMUEL BOWLEY, Esq., of Gloucester, then read the address, which was as follows:—­

“MADAM:  It is with feelings of the deepest interest that the committee of the British and Foreign Antislavery Society, on behalf of themselves and of the society they represent, welcome the gifted authoress of Uncle Tom’s Cabin to the shores of Great Britain.