supplied. In this view the writers referred to are correct. They
are right also in supposing that a reduction below present prices, of a
cent or two per pound, would be ruinous to India in the present
condition of her inland transportation. They desire, very naturally,
therefore, that prices should be kept up for the advantage of India, so
that its cotton can bear export. But while high prices benefit India,
they also enrich the American planter, and afford him inducements to
renew the slave trade.
Here Great Britain is thrown into a dilemma. The slave trade to America
must be prevented, in her opinion, or it will ruin the East Indies. To
prevent the renewal of this traffic--to keep up the price of cotton as
long as may be necessary, for the benefit of India, and prevent a supply
of African slaves from reaching the American planter--is a problem that
requires more than an ordinary amount of skill to solve. That skill, if
it exists any where, is possessed by British statesmen, and they are now
employed in the execution of this difficult task. They are convinced
that free labor cannot be found, at this moment, any where in the world,
to meet the growing demands for cotton. To supply this increasing
demand, a new element must be brought into requisition; or rather old
elements must be employed anew. Her cotton spindles must not cease to
whir, or millions of the people of Great Britain will starve at home, or
be forced into emigration, to the weakening of her strength. The old
sources of supply being inadequate, a new field of operations must be
opened up--new forces must be brought into requisition in the
cultivation of cotton. Slave labor and free labor, both combined, are
not now able to furnish the quantity needed. Free labor cannot be
increased, at present, in this department of production. Slave labor,
therefore, is the only means left by which the work can be
accomplished--not slave labor to the extent now employed, but to the
extent to which it may be increased from the ranks of the scores of
millions of the population of Africa.
This is the true state of the case; and the important question now
agitated is: Who shall have the advantages of this labor? Two fields,
only, present themselves in which this additional labor can be
employed--Africa and America. Great Britain is deeply interested in
limiting it to Africa, which she can only do by preventing a renewal of
the slave trade to America: for she takes it for g
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