e property is continually menaced with destruction, is one of
those hazardous operations from which commerce is accustomed to recoil.
Deprived of the capital furnished it by New York, obtaining only with
great difficulty a few onerous and precarious advances in Europe, the
South will see itself smitten at once in all its means of production;
and, after the harvest of 1860, which secures our supplies for a year,
after that of 1861, which it will succeed, probably, in gathering, but
which it will be more difficult to sell, it is not easy to divine how it
will set to work to continue its crops. While the South produces less
cotton, and we lose the habit of buying of it, the cotton culture will
become acclimated elsewhere; the future will thus be destroyed like the
present; final ruin will approach with hasty strides.

They tell us of a loan that the new Confederacy designs to contract!
Unless it be transformed into a forced loan, I have little faith in its
chance. They add that it will be only necessary to establish on exported
cotton a duty of a few cents per pound, and the coffers of the South
will be filled. But, in the first place, to export cotton, they must
produce it--they must have money; it is almost impossible that the State
should be rich when all its citizens are in distress; then the
exportation itself will be exposed to some difficulties if the United
States organize a blockade. And I say nothing of the bad effect that
will be produced by this tax _a la Turque_--this tax on exportation in
the very midst of plans of commercial freedom. Neither do I speak of the
effect which this extra charge, which is termed trifling, but which is,
in fact, considerable, will have on the sale of American cotton,
already so defective, when compared with the average price of other
cottons.

Poor country, which blind passion, and, above all, indomitable pride,
precipitates into the path of crime and misery! Poor, excommunicated
nation, whose touch will be dreaded, whose flag will be suspected, whose
continually increasing humiliations will not even be compensated by a
few meagre profits! The heart is oppressed at the thought of the clear,
certain, inevitable future, which awaits so many men, less guilty than
erring. Between them and the rest of the world there will be nothing
longer in common; they will establish on their frontier a police over
books and journals, essaying to prevent the fatal introduction of an
idea of liberty: