better descriptions of which it has been the aim of the freetraders in America to import to this present day. It is thought, however, that the first planting of cotton for use took place in Virginia about the year 1661, at which period there had been an over-production of tobacco, and the colonists were deprived of a market for the whole of their surplus in consequence of the Navigation Act of Charles II. This directed attention to other crops, cotton included. There is a paper in the historical collections of South Carolina, written and published in England in 1666, entitled, 'A Brief Description of the Province of Carolina, on the Coast of Florida,' the object of which was to encourage emigration, and among the inducements it states that

The charters granted to the founders of the settlement of the colony of Virginia distinctly empowered them to carry on a direct intercourse with foreign States; and they were not slow in availing themselves of this permission, for they had, as early as 1620, established tobacco warehouses in Middleburgh and Flushing. The British Government afterwards deprived them of this privilege. It was not until they had surmounted the difficulties and hardships incident to their first establishment, and had begun to increase rapidly in wealth, that their commerce commenced to excite the jealousy of the mother-country. Regulations were, therefore, framed with a view of restricting its freedom. The Act of 1650, passed by the Republican Parliament, laid the first foundations of the monopoly system, by confining the import and export trade of the colonies exclusively to British- or colonialbuilt ships. But the famous Navigation Act of 1660 (12 Charles II. c. 18) went further. It enacted that certain specified articles, the produce of the colonies, and since well known in commerce by the name of enumerated articles, should not be exported directly from the colonies to any foreign country, but that they should be first sent to Britain and then unladen (the words of the Act are laid upon the shore), before they could be forwarded to their final destination. Sugar, molasses, ginger, fustic, tobacco, cotton, and indigo were originally enumerated; and the list was subsequently enlarged by the addition of coffee, hides and skins, iron, coal, lumber, &c. In 1739 the monopoly system was so far relaxed that sugars were permitted to be carried directly from the British plantations to any port or place south of Cape Finisterre. The Act of 1764 provided that no commodity of the growth or manufacture of Europe should be imported into the British plantations but such as were laden and put on board in England, Wales, or Berwick-upon-Tweed, and in English-built shipping, whereof the master and two-thirds of the crew were English. In the Charter of Pennsylvania the colonists had been empowered to carry on a direct intercourse with foreign States, but that permission by the general laws was rescinded. It was not until 1803 that Great Britain began to assume a more liberal policy with her dependencies. She has since taken off all restrictions upon

commerce.

the lands grow indigo, tobacco very good, and cotton wool.' In the same collections Dr. Hewett describes the manner of cultivating the cotton plant, stating that the colonists did not consider it of much importance. Peter Purry, a Swiss, the founder of Purrysburgh in the same colony, memorialised George I. in 1731, in relation to a certain country, extending thirty-three degrees on either side of the equator, capable of producing cotton; he also wrote at the same time from Charleston that cotton and flax thrive admirably.' Cotton was grown

on a limited scale, in the vicinity of Easton in Talbot County, Maryland, in 1736. Miss Lucas, afterwards Mrs. Pinckney, of South Carolina, the daughter of the Governor of Antigua, says in her journal, under date of July 1, 1739, Wrote to my father 'to-day on the pains I had taken to bring the indigo, ginger, 'cotton, &c. to perfection, and that I had greater hopes for the 'indigo than anything else.' Among the archives of the Department de la Marine et des Colonies at Paris, there is a report on cotton written in 1760, which speaks of the great advantage Louisiana might derive from its culture; its introduction from St. Domingo, the difficulty of separating the seed from the wool, and suggesting the importation of machinery from the East Indies for that purpose. Just before the breaking out of the revolutionary war in 1775, the Congress of South Carolina recommended its people to raise cotton; and General Delegall, of that colony, at that time cultivated thirty acres of green seed cotton, near Savannah in Georgia.' In the same year cotton was grown in St. Mary's County, Maryland, Cape May County, New Jersey, and Sussex County, Delaware. Mr. Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia' in 1781, alludes to the domestic economy of making cotton goods in families for their own use.

The cotton seed used, according to some authorities, came from Manilla, Cyprus, and Malta; others state that it was brought from Barbadoes. No doubt all varieties were tried. The exports of cotton, prior to the Revolution, consisted of seven bales in 1748, and ten bales in 1770, but the produce may have been of island growth.

The attention of the Americans after peace was concluded, in 1783, was turned more towards the cultivation of cotton, not for export, but for manufacturing purposes. Previous to that event

they relied on obtaining their principal supplies of the raw material from the island colonies, and their best fabrics, as stated above, came from England. There was a disposition to be independent' in all things. Mr. Tench Coxe of Philadelphia, who took an active interest in public affairs, in writing in 1785, entertained the pleasing conviction that the United 'States in its extensive regions south of Anne Arundel and Talbot (Maryland) would certainly become a great cotton 'producing country.' In 1786, Mr. Madison expressed himself in the same manner. These impressions, together with the supply of cotton that had been received at Philadelphia during the Revolution, all of which had not been consumed, induced Mr. Coxe to visit England, in order to purchase machinery, the restrictions upon the use of Arkwright's patent having been removed. He found, however, that the British laws forbade the exportation of machinery. In order to overcome this difficulty, he had complete brass models made, finished, and packed, but they were detected by the Government examining officer, and forfeited. No means then remained to obtain the benefit of the British invention, but to manufacture the machinery in America, and Mr. Samuel Slater, of Belper, Derbyshire, who had been a pupil of Arkwright's, was engaged for that purpose; without patterns or memoranda to assist him in his work, he depended solely on his memory for its accomplishment. Mr. Coxe has been called the father of the growth of cotton in America,' and Mr. Slater has been named 'the father of the cotton manufacture in America.' Small as the production of cotton was at that time, not being then considered much more than a garden plant, there seems to have been, with the receipts of that of foreign growth, a surplus. In 1784, eight bales were shipped to Liverpool, and were seized at the Custom House there, as an illicit importation of British colonial produce; they were restored to their consignees so soon as it was discovered that so large' a quantity of cotton could be grown on the American continent. Exportations have been continued from that day to this. Neither the embargoes of 1794 and 1808, the Nonintercourse Act that followed, the war of 1812-14, nor the blockade of the Southern ports, nor the sinking of stone fleets' at the mouths of harbours, have prevented some American cotton reaching Europe.

Notwithstanding the occurrence at Liverpool in 1784, Mr. Jay, the American Minister at London, ten years later, considered that the cotton grown in the Southern States was not likely to be of much consequence. In the 12th article of the treaty which he negotiated with Great Britain in 1794, cotton was included with molasses, sugar, coffee, and cocoa, as articles which American vessels should not be permitted to carry from the Islands or from the United States to any foreign country. The Senate refused to ratify this provision. Mr. Jay did not regard cotton as an article of regular export; indeed, the United States Tariff Act of July 1, 1789, then in force, called for a duty of three cents per pound on all imported—not for protection, but for revenue. It was at that time thought that American manufacturers would have to depend on other countries for a supply of the raw material. This belief was so general that Congress was petitioned to repeal the duty. In a few years, however, it was ascertained that sufficient cotton could be grown in the South, and the duty became a dead letter. The cultivation of cotton from this period increased rapidly; the improvements in machinery augmenting its use, induced its production, and gave occupation to the plethora of African labour, that was then becoming a serious inconvenience and loss to the people of the South. The negroes had, in fact, multiplied too fast, although all the Southern States had passed laws preventing the ingress of slaves, which the Yankees were smuggling into their borders, from the North as well as from Africa. The British, too, were engaged in the same traffic, though the most stringent measures were adopted from time to time by all the Southern States for its suppression. Not one Northern State ever prohibited the trade. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, were extensively engaged in the commerce, until it was interdicted by the General Government, January 1, 1808. It is fortunate for the blacks, as well as the whites, that the cotton business sprang up, for the sons of Africa do not flourish in a state of freedom, and, without the cultivation. of the leading staple of commerce, there would not have been sufficient occupation for them. The planters would have preferred to manumit their slaves, which in fact was done in many instances, rather than to be encumbered with idle

and superfluous hands. The natural increase of the negroes has more than kept pace with the demand for their labour; it is therefore fortunate that the Southerners prohibited the African slave trade at so early a day. Had they not done so, they would have been overrun with savages; and they now believe that the resumption of that commerce would so alter and vitiate the character of slavery in their States as to render it prejudicial to their interests; hence, there has been engrafted in the Confederate Constitution a special clause that does not exist in the Federal document, placing it out of the power of the Southern Congress to open the traffic, while the Northern Congress has a right to make it legal at any time it may think proper. This was not done to please or conciliate the fanaticism of Europe in reference to slavery, which is altogether distinct from the African slave trade, although frequently confounded therewith, but at the unanimous demand of the people it was thus made a fundamental law of the Southern Union. The slaves in all the States have increased from 697,897 in 1790, to 3,953,760 in 1860. Their value per head is eight or ten times greater now than at the first-named date. Some political economists would argue that these statistics denoted scarcity of this kind of service; the enormous stocks of American cotton and yarns, and goods made therefrom, at all the various markets of the world, when the war in America commenced, and the large quantities of produce now in the South, disprove such a theory. The Southerners have, in their slaves, advantages comparable to a 'patent right,' which would be entirely lost to them were the African slave trade reopened. Cotton cannot be cultivated to advantage in the Confederate States-or in the West Indiesexcept by forced labour, and African labour can only be properly managed by the controlling influence of the white race. 'strike' in the South would imperil an entire cotton crop. The following pages will, it is to be hoped, prove that the negro in the Confederate States is in his proper sphere of life, and that all attempts to change his present happy condition have not only been an injury to him, but that if the Southern people had swerved from their sound position in the matter, they would have been surrounded by this time by hordes

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