Of all the British textile manufactures, that of cotton is by far the most important. Mr. Mann, in his work on the cotton-trade of Great Britain (page 30), gives the following estimate of the amount of capital employed in it: • These are the figures returned by the Factory Inspectors in 1856: the number of both spindles and looms has, however, since wonderfully increased. Since the returns were made, upon which the preceding estimate is based, the cotton-machinery of Great Britain has rapidly increased. Lancashire alone, in 1859, contained twenty-eight million spindles and three hundred thousand looms ; which was about the number in the whole kingdom only three years before. The annual exports of British cottons exceed in value $240,000,000, and are distributed in fifty-seven different markets. The annual results to Great Britain of the cotton manufacture are approximately given in the following tabular view : — TABLE E. An Estimate of the Amount which accrued to British Capital and Labor from the Manufacture of Cotton, in each Year, from 1850 to 1839. This Estimate is deduced from No. 103 of the Appendix, in which the Total Value of the Cotton Manufacture given is supposed to include Interest on the Capital employed; Wages of every Kind paid; the Cost of Fuel, Drugs, and Dyestuffs; all General Expenses and Profits. : From the right-hand column of this table, it appears that the mean annual amount which England derived from the cotton manufacture in 1858 and 1859 was $194,936,685. About $6,000,000 of this sum must be set down to drugs, dyestuffs, and other imported articles; leaving $188,936,685 as the amount which she derived from the application of her own capital, labor, and other internal resources. The mean annual value of the cotton-crop in the United States, in the same years, was $186,143,792; of which $146,410,792 worth was exported, and $39,733,000 consumed at home.1 Thus we see, that the annual benefit of the cotton manufacture to England is nearly equal to the annual value of the cotton culture in the United States, and $42,525,893 more than the value of the cotton exported. The importance of the cotton manufacture to England can scarcely be overestimated. Mr. BAZLEY, a member of Parliament, and a large cotton manufacturer in Lancashire, in a paper entitled “A Glance at the Cotton-trade," read before the British 1 See Appendix, Nos. 8 and 144. fair computation, the import and manufacture of cotton, which has so largely employed the capital and labor of this country, has yielded a profit of not less than one thousand million pounds sterling to the people of the United Kingdom." This, expressed in Federal currency, amounts to $5,000,000,000, a sum nearly equal to the assessed value of the whole personal property in the United States.1 Says Mr. PORTER, "It is to the spinning-jenny and the steam-engine that we must look, as having been the true moving powers of our fleets and armies, and the chief support also of a long-continued agricultural prosperity." The prodigious growth of manufactures in England, and especially of the cottonmanufacture, and the momentous results of this remarkable progress, are cloquently depicted by Mr. McCULLOCH, in words which no one acquainted with the facts can call extravagant: "The rapid growth and prodigious magnitude of the cotton manufacture of Great Britain are, beyond all question, the most extraordinary phenomena in the history of industry. Our command of the finest wool naturally attracted our attention to the woollen manufacture, and paved the way for that superiority in it which we long since attained; but, when we undertook the cotton manufacture, we had comparatively few facilities for its prosecution, and had to struggle with the greatest difficulties. The raw material was produced at an immense distance from our shores; and, in Ilindostan and China, the inhabitants had arrived at such perfection in the arts of spinning and weaving, that the lightness and delicacy of their finest cloths emulated the web of the gossamer, and seemed to set competition at defiance. Such, however, has been the influence of the stupendous discoveries and inventions of Hargreaves, Arkwright, Crompton, Cartwright, and others, that we have overcome all these difficulties, -that neither the extreme cheapness of labor in Hindostan, nor the excellence to which the natives had attained, has enabled them to withstand the competition of those who buy their cotton, and who, after carrying it five thousand miles to be manufactured, carry back the goods to them. This is the greatest triumph of mechanical genius; and, what perhaps is most extraordinary, our superiority is not the late result of a long series of successive discoveries and inventions on the contrary, it has been accomplished in a very few years. A century has not elapsed since the British cotton manufacture was in its infancy; and it now forms the principal business carried on in the country, affording au advantageous field for the accumulation and employment of millions upon millions of capital, and of thousands upon thousands of workmen ! The skill and genius by which these astonishing results have been achieved have been oue of the main sources of our power: they have contributed, in no common degree, to raise the British nation to the high and conspicuous place she now occupies. Nor is it too much to say, that the wealth and energy derived from the cotton manufacture powerfully 1 See Appendix, No. 151. Porter's Progress of the Nation, p. 168. Arkwright's machinery for carding and spinning cotton by steam was first used in Manchester in 1783. The first importa tions of American cotton into England took place in 1785, —one bale, per "Diana," from Charleston; one, per "Tonyn," from New York; and three per "Grange," and nine per "Friendship," from Philadelphia. A part of it was seized in Liverpool by the custom-house officers, under the impression that cotton was not the produce of the United States. Whitney's saw-gin, for cleaning cotton, was invented in 1793. The first exportation of English cotton-twist to India consisted of eight pounds sent out on trial in 1815.- Burn's Statistics of the Cotton-trade. assisted in carrying us triumphantly through the tremendous struggle with revolutionary France, at the same time that it materially contributes to that strength by which we are able, without difficulty, to sustain burdens that would have crushed our fathers, and could not be supported by any other people."1 - an That the statesmen of Great Britain should watch with jealous care an interest of such magnitude, and so closely connected with national prosperity and power, interest in which so many find the source of all their wealth, and on which a vastly greater number depend for their daily subsistence, is surely no strange thing. It would be stranger, indeed, were they to do otherwise. To protect, diversify, extend, and diffuse more and more widely, her manufactures, is the true, as it is the only possible, policy for England. This fact she well understands; and this policy she steadily pursues, with a vigilance that never sleeps, and with a sagacity unequalled in the history of nations. THE DEPENDENT CONDITION OF ENGLAND. The territory of Great Britain, taking the census of 1861, allows less than two acres and three-quarters of surface to each person in the United Kingdom. From the fact, that a very considerable portion of the country is incapable of cultivation, even this small allowance must be sensibly reduced. We need but look at the map and the census, to see that the population of the British Islands has attained a density far beyond the capacity of their soil to sustain. Millions of emigrants from those crowded shores, who, within the last twenty-five years, have left the land of their nativity for other and distant homes, are unimpeachable witnesses to the same fact. As, however, notwithstanding this depletion, the population has steadily increased, England, even in spite of a constantly improving agriculture, has been growing more and more dependent on other countries for her bread. Abundant acknowledgments of this necessity might be adduced from the highest British authorities. Let one or two suffice. 13 Mr. VILLIERS, urging, in 1844, the repeal of the corn-laws, said, "For twenty years past, we have been constantly and largely dependent on other countries for our supplies of corn.' Pressing the same topic a year later, he declared, "The time is come when every individual soul born in Great Britain must look to manufactures, or at least to something else than agriculture, for the means of living." "The unskilled laboring classes," said Mr. COBDEN, in debate on the corn-laws, "are in a condition which is permanently disagreeable to the government. Look at Ireland, where five millions of people never touch wheaten bread, where threefourths of the people live on roots. In the Scotch Highlands, and in the midland counties of England, there are similar evidences of want." The truth of these painful and alarming statements was fully confirmed when the repeal of the corn-laws was carried over the heads of the reluctant land-owners. To the same effect, we have the unimpeachable testimony of national and official records, as given in the tabular statement F. TABLE F. This Table exhibits the Comparative Increase of the Population, the Declared Value of British Exports, the Import-cost of Breadstuffs entered for Ilome Consumption, with the Percentage thereof on said Exports, for each Quinquennial Period since 1821. Dividing the entire forty years into eight equal portions, the table gives the mean annual value of breadstuffs consumed in Great Britain in each of the shorter periods, and shows that it has advanced from $2,500,000 at the beginning to $110,500,000 at the close. Great as the increase has been, it seems to be still enlarging. The corn-importation of 1860, already referred to as amounting to $156,000,000, has been surpassed, as we have every reason to believe, by the importation of 1861. Mark also the important fact disclosed by this table, that, vast as the exports of Great 1 Hansard, vol. 81, 3d series, p. 353. There are now, in the United Kingdom, over one million paupers: they constitute one twenty-ninth part of her whole population. Her ordinary annual expenditure for the relief of |