by referring to a question- or, I might say, to two questions, for it was one great question in two parts,-which at this moment occupies the mind, and, I think, must afflict the heart

may state in a sentence, that the greatest, probably the most prosperous, manufacturing industry that this country or the world has ever seen, has been suddenly and unexpectedly stricken down, but by a blow which had not been unforeseen or unforetold. Nearly five hundred thousand persons-men, women, and children-at this moment are saved from the utmost extremes of famine, not a few of them from

o much is being done for them, is to be found in the extensive information they possess, and which of late years, and now more than ever, has been communicated to them through the instrumentality of an untaxed press. Noble Lords who have recently spoken, official men, and public

overnment that has lasted as long as the Government of the United States, and it has had far more insurrections and secessions, not one of which, I suppose some in this meeting must regret, has been tolerated by our Government or recognised by France. Our Government in India has existed for a hundred years in some portion of the country where cotton is a staple produce

Ryots, that is, the cultivators, at their own free disposal; and he says that they are not suffered to know what they shall get for it until after it has been far removed from their reach and from the country by exportation coastwise to Bombay; and he says further, that the Company's servants fixed the prices from ten to thirty per cent, under the general market rate in the districts that were not under the Company's rule. During the three years before the Company's monopoly was abolished, in 1814, the w

on was 56 rupees per candy, leaving the grower only 24 rupees, or rather less than 3/4_d_. per pound. In 1846 there was so great a decay of the cotton-trade of Western India, that a committee was appointed in Bombay, partly of Members of the Chamber of Commerce and partly of servants of the Government, and they made a report i

scarce, for hundreds of the mills were working short time, and many were closed altogether. That committee reported that, in all the districts of Bombay and Madras where cotton was cultivated, and generally over those agricultural regions,

rayer-meeting, not more than a dozen miles from where I live, one of the ministers was earnest in supplication to the Supreme; he detailed, no doubt, a great many things which he thought they were in want of,

which was native and common in India before America was discovered by Europeans,-that the growth of that article

e Bombay Committee in 1846, and for my Committee in 1848, there would not have been any cotton sent from India at this moment to be worked up in Lancashire. Now, in 1846, the quantity of cotton coming from India had fallen to 94,000 bales.

ved for that Committee, in a speech from which I shall read one short extract. I said that, 'We ought not to forget that the whole of the cotton grown in America is produced by slave labour, and this, I think, all will admit,- that, no matter as to the period in which slavery may have existed, abolished it will ultimately be, eit

convenient way of burying an unpleasant question, at least for another session. The committee sat during the session of 1848, and it made a report, from which I shall quote, not an extract, but the sense of an extract. The evidence was very extensive, very complete, and entirely condemnatory of

of ascertaining the truth of this matter, I moved, 'That a Royal Commission proceed to India to inquire into the obstacles which prevent the increased growth of cotton in India, and to report

it will be impossible in any country, and most of all in America, to keep between two and three millions of the population permanently in a state of bondage. By whatever means that system is to be abolished, whether by insurrection,-which I should deplore,-or by some great measure of justice from the Government,-one thing is certain, that the produc

in Greece. Notwithstanding this, I called upon Lord John Russell, who was then the Prime Minister, and asked him whether he would grant the Commission I was going to move for. I will say this for him, he appeared to agree with me that it was a reasonable thing. I believe he saw the peril, and that my proposition was a proper one, but he said he wished he could communica

ime I was speaking; but when Sir John Hobhouse rose to resist the motion, and he found the Government would not consent to it, he then left his seat, and left the House. The night after, or two nights after, he met me in the lobby; and he said he thought it was but right he should explain why he left the House after the conversation he had held with me on this question before. He said he had hoped the Government would agree to the motion, but when he found they would not, h

ortation of cotton has shown an 'immense increase' almost every three years for the last fifty years. But it was because that increase was entirely, or nearly so, from one source, and that source one of extreme peril, that I asked for the inquiry for which I moved. He said he had a letter in his hand-and he shook it at me-from the Secretary of the Commercial Association of Manchester, in w

pse of eight hundred years ape the Norman style-sits in the House of Peers, and legislates for you, having neglected in regard to India every great duty which appertained to his high office; and to show that it is not only cabinets and monarchs who thus dis

to have a Commission of Inquiry of our own. We raised a subscription of more than 2,000_l_.; we selected a gentleman-Mr. Alexander Mackay, the author of one of the very best books ever written by an Englishman upon America, The Western World-and we invited him to beco

articularly, undertook the charge of publishing these reports, and a friend of Mr. Mackay's, now no longer living, undertook the editorship of th

ernment of that great country for another twenty years upon a Company which had so entirely neglected every duty belonging to it except one-the duty of collecting taxes. In 1854, Colonel Cotton-now Sir Arthur Cotton, one of the most distinguished engineers in India-came down to Manchester. We had a meeting at the Town Hall, and he gave an address on the subject of opening the Godavery Rive

form of government for India. That was exactly what we asked them to do in 1853; but, as in everything else, nothing is done until there comes an overwhelming calamity, when the most obtuse and perverse is driven from his position. In 1858 that Bill passed, under the auspices of Lord Stanley. It was not a Bill such as I think Lo

d, as regards each other, independent Presidencies of equal rank, with a governor and council in each, and each government corresponding with, and dependent upon, and responsible to, a Secretary of State in this country. I am of opinion that if such a Government were established, one in each Presidency, and if there was a first-class engineer, with an efficient staff, whose business should be to determi

has fallen upon us. And I may mention that some friends of mine-Mr. John Dickinson, now Chairman of the Indian Reform Association, Mr. Bazley, one of the members for Manchester, Mr. Ashworth, the President of the Chamber of Commerce of Manchester, and Mr.

our great need?' Well, I reply, 'I told you something when speaking was of use; all I can say now is this, or nearly all, that a hundred years of crime against the n

g some of the strange theories of my honourable Colleague, that there never will again be in America a crop of cotton grown by slave labour. You will understand-I hope so, at least-that I am not undertaking the office of prophet, I am not predicting; I know that everything which is not absolutely impossible may happen, and therefore thin

ur is probably worth 10_s_. a-day, I am not sure you are likely to get any large supply of that material we so much want, at a rate so cheap that we shall be likely to use it. Africa is pointed to by a very zealous friend of mine; but Africa is a land of savages, and with its climate so much against European constitutions, I should not entertain the hope that any great relief at any early period can be had from that continent. Egypt will send us 30,000 or 40,000 bales more than last year; in all probability Syria and Bra

re is one stimulus-the only one that I know of; and although I have not recommended it to the Government, and I know not precisely what sacrifice it would entail, yet I shall mention it, and I do it on the authority of a gentleman to whom I have before referred, who is thoroughly acquainted with Indian agriculture, and whose family have been landowners and cultivators in India for sixty years. He says there is only one mode by which you c

toration of the prosperity of Lancashire as distant. I believe this misfortune may entail ruin upon the whole working population, and that it may gradually engulf the smaller traders and those possessing the least capital. I do not say it will, because, as I have said, what is not impossible may happen,-but it ma

f the opinions which I hold, and which I proposed to lay before you if he had not spoken. Having given to him, notwithstanding some diversity of opinion, a fair and candid hearing, I presume that I shall receive the same favour from those who may differ from me. If I had known that my hon. Friend was going to make an

ould much rather-far rather-that I lost any opportunity like this of speaking on this question, than I would have come here and appeared to be at variance with him. But I am happy to say that this great question does not depend upon the opinion of any m

ealt with the case of a colony of Spain or Portugal revolting in South America, or of Greece revolting from Turkey. I should like to state here what I once said to an eminent American. He asked me if I could give him an i

erent politics in this country was, 'They have a Government which is mild, and not in any degree oppressive; they have not what some people love very much, and what some people dislike,- they have not a costly monarchy, and an aristocracy, creating and living on patronage. They have not an expensive foreign p

e-such was the unprepared state of the North, such was the apparent paralysis of everything there-thought there would be no war; and men shook hands with each other pleasantly, and congratulated themselves that the disaster of a great strife, and the mischief to our own

ecide what shall be the fate of a whole continent. It was said that the contest was hopeless, and why should the North continue a contest at so much loss of blood and treasure, and at so great a loss to the commerce of the whole world? If a man thought-if a man believed in his heart that the contest was absolutely hopeless-no man in this country had probably any right to

diversity of opinion. But the majority were supposed to indorse the policy of the Government in making a great demonstration of force. And I think I read that at least one minister of religion took that view from this platform. I am not complaining of it. But I say that if you thought when the American captain, even if he had acted under the commands of his Govern

of Gibraltar was taken and retained by this country when we were not at war with Spain, and it was retained contrary to every law of morality and honour. [A Voice: 'No! No!'] No doubt the Gentleman below is much better acquainted with the history of it than I am,

ment has been anxious to give it up, and I hope this Government will send my friend, Mr. Cobden, to Madrid, with an offer that Gibraltar shall be ceded to Spain, as being of no use to this country, and only embittering, as statesmen have admitted, the relations between Spain and England,-and if he were to go to Madrid with an offer of the Rock of Gibraltar, I believe he might obtai

the raising of a hundred thousand men, and when, on the 15th of April, they attacked Fort Sumter-not a fort of South Carolina, but a fort of the Union-then, upon all the principles that Englishmen and English Governments have ever acted u

nor in that even of President Lincoln, but it is in the hand of the Supreme Ruler, who is bringing about one of those great transactions in history which men often will not regard when they are passing before them, but which they look back upon w

mity with this country. Its Minister is in London-a man honourable by family, as you know, in America, his father and his grandfather having held the office of President of the Republic. You have your own Minister just returned to Washington. Is th

perpetuate for ever the bondage of all the posterity of those four millions of slaves. [A few cries of 'No! No!'] You will hear that I am not in a condition to contest vigorously anything that may be opposed, for I am suffering, as nearly everybody is, from the state of the weathe

egroes, to lash negroes, to chain negroes, to buy and sell negroes, to deny them the commonest ties of family, or to break their hearts by rending them at their pleasure, to close their mental eye to but a glimpse even of that

ognized. But Greece was not recognized till after she had fought Turkey for six years, and the Republics of South America, some of them, not till they had fought the mother country for a score of years. France did not recognize the United States of America till some, I think, six years,

is, as far as respects the present generation, an accident, and it would be unreasonable that we should object to trade with and have political relations with a country, merely because it happened to have within its bor

f the Great Republic; that there are rich men on our commercial exchanges, depraved, it may be, by their riches, and thriving unwholesomely within the atmosphere of a privi

nd that there are public writers of eminence and honour who will not barter human rights for the patronage of the great. But most of all, and before all, I believe,-I am sure it is true in Lancashire, where the working men have seen themselves coming down from prosperity to ruin, fr

land-that it should be broken up. But we will suppose that we are in New York or in Boston, discussing the policy and power of England. If any one there were to point to England,-not to the thirty-one millions of population in these islands, but to her one hundred and fifty millions in India, and nobody knows how many millions m

or speaks of 'manifest destiny' and the supremacy of the 'Stars and Stripes' or boasts that the Eagles of one nation, having once overrun Europe, may possibly repeat the experiment,-I say all this is to be condemned. It is not truly patriotic; it is not rational;

onourable Friend? But if the North does not like England, does anybody believe the South does? It does not appear to me to be a question of liking or disliking. Everybody knows that when the South was in power,-and it has been in po

d I have reason to believe it, by a member of the British Parliament; that she is furnished with guns of English manufacture; that she is manned almost entirely by Englishmen; and that these facts were represented, as I know they were represented, to the collector of customs in Liverpool, who pooh-poohed them, and said there was nothing in them. He was requested to send the facts up to London to the Customs' authorities, and their solicitor

s vessel should be seized, and she happened to sail an hour or two before the message arrived. She has never been into a Confederate port-they have not got any ports; she hoists the English flag when she wants to come alongside a ship; she sets a ship on fire in the night, and when, seeing fire, another ship bears down to lend help, she seize

there has been no indication of it until the advices that have come to hand within the last two days-what is the opinion of the great body of the working classes in England. There has been every effort that money and malice could make to stimulate in Lancashire, amongst the suffering population, an expression of opinion in favour of the Slave States. They have not b

he wrote on the question of America-he had no difficulty in deciding. Ask Garibaldi. Is there in Europe a more disinterested and generous friend of freedom than Garibaldi? Ask that illustrious Hungarian, to whose marvellous eloquence you once listened in this hall. Will he tell you that slavery has nothing to do with it, and that the slaveholders of the South will liberate the negroes sooner than the North through the

ll. I will tell you what is the reason. Our London press is mainly in the hands of certain ruling West End classes; it acts and writes in favour of those classes. I will tell you what they mean. One of the most eminent statesmen in this country,-one who has rendered the greatest services to the country, though, I must say, not in

to find a home in the Free States of America? That is a population equal to eight great cities of the size of Birmingham. What would you think of eight Birminghams being transplanted from this country and set down in the United States? Speaking g

atch-string nev

oorest child

ise; there, you will find a free Church, a free school, free land, a free vote, and a free career for the child of the humblest born in the land. My countr

the American Republic; it is a hideous outrage against human right and against Divine law; but the pride, the passion of man, will not permit its peaceable extinction. The slave-owners of our colonies, if they had been strong enough, would have revolted too. I believe th

grity of Turkey. Is not this war the penalty which inexorable justice exacts from America, North and South, for the enormous guilt of cherishing that frightful iniquity of slavery for the last eighty years? I do not blame any man here who thinks the cause of the North hopeless and the restoration of the Union impossible. It m

ut what I do blame is this. I blame men who are eager to admit into the family of nations a State which offers itself to us, based upon a principle, I will undertake to say, more odious and more blasphemous than was ever heretofore dre

is with the ravages of war. I cannot believe that civilization, in its journey with the sun, will

h slaughter

gates of merc

rth in unbroken line to the glowing South, and from the wild billows of the Atlantic westward to the calmer waters of the Pacific main,-and I see one people, and

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