the promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come; but if there were no hereafter, and if man had no progress in this life, and if there were no question of civilization at all, it would be worth your while to protect civilization and liberty, merely as a commercial speculation.  To evangelize has more than a moral and religious import—­it comes back to temporal relations.  Wherever a nation that is crushed, cramped, degraded under despotism is struggling to be free, you, Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Paisley, all have an interest that that nation should be free.  When depressed and backward people demand that they may have a chance to rise—­Hungary, Italy, Poland—­it is a duty for humanity’s sake, it is a duty for the highest moral motives, to sympathize with them; but besides all these there is a material and an interested reason why you should sympathize with them.  Pounds and pence join with conscience and with honor in this design.  Now, Great Britain’s chief want is—­what?

They have said that your chief want is cotton.  I deny it.  Your chief want is consumers. [Applause and hisses.] You have got skill, you have got capital, and you have got machinery enough to manufacture goods for the whole population of the globe.  You could turn out fourfold as much as you do, if you only had the market to sell in.  It is not so much the want, therefore, of fabric, though there may be a temporary obstruction of it; but the principal and increasing want—­increasing from year to year—­is, where shall we find men to buy what we can manufacture so fast? [Interruption, and a voice, “The Morrill tariff,” and applause.] Before the American war broke out, your warehouses were loaded with goods that you could not sell. [Applause and hisses.] You had over-manufactured; what is the meaning of over-manufacturing but this:  that you had skill, capital, machinery, to create faster than you had customers to take goods off your hands?  And you know that rich as Great Britain is, vast as are her manufactures, if she could have fourfold the present demand, she could make fourfold riches to-morrow; and every political economist will tell you that your want is not cotton primarily, but customers.  Therefore, the doctrine, how to make customers, is a great deal more important to Great Britain than the doctrine how to raise cotton.  It is to that doctrine I ask from you, business men, practical men, men of fact, sagacious Englishmen—­to that point I ask a moment’s attention. [Shouts of “Oh, oh!” hisses, and applause.] There are no more continents to be discovered. [Hear, hear!] The market of the future must be found—­how?  There is very little hope of any more demand being created by new fields.  If you are to have a better market there must be some kind of process invented to make the old fields better. [A voice, “Tell us something new,” shouts of order, and interruption.] Let us look at it, then.  You must civilize the world in order to make a better class of purchasers.