y experience the influence which the Southern States can exercise
upon the election of a President. . . . . . . If the free States are
indifferent, we know that, at whatever risk, the slave States will have
their own way; and with them it is plain that much must depend upon the
price of cotton and the motives which it furnishes to '_open more land
and buy more negroes_.'

"But with what an enormous interest does this view of the case invest
the cultivation of cotton in India. It is the only real obstacle that we
can interpose to the growing feeling in favor of slavery, to the
diminishing abhorrence of the slave trade in the United States. It is
the only field, competition with which can, for many years to come,
redress the undue stimulant which high prices are giving to slave labor
in America. Nor do the facts as regard the past discourage the hope that
it may be successfully used for that purpose. In 1840 the supply of
cotton from India was 77,011,000 lbs.;--in 1858 it had risen to
138,253,000 lbs.: having been in the immediately preceding year no less
than 250,338,000 lbs. The average importation for four years from 1840
to 1843 amounted to 83,300,000 lbs.:--the average importation for the
last four years has been 178,000,000 lbs. or somewhat more than double
that of the former period. In some important respects the conditions of
supply from India differ very much from those which attach to and
determine the supply from America. In India there is no limit to the
quantity of labor. There may be said to be little or none to the
quantity of land. The obstacle is of another kind; it lies almost
exclusively in the want of cheap transit. Our supplies of India cotton
are not even determined by the quantity produced, but by that which,
when produced, can profitably be forwarded to England. It is, therefore,
a question of price whether we obtain more or less. A rise in the price
of _one penny_ the pound in 1857, suddenly increased the supply from
180,000,000 lbs. in 1856 to 250,000,000 lbs. in 1857. A fall in the
price in 1858 again suddenly reduced it to 138,000,000 lbs. It was not
that the production of cotton varied in these proportions in those
years, but that at given prices it was possible to incur more cost in
the transit than at others. The same high price, therefore, which at
present renders a large supply possible from India, creates an unusual
demand for slaves in the United States. But would not the same
corrective