waste, or nearly seven pounds per pood, stand thus for Russia in round
numbers:--

For the year 1822, in the shape of raw cotton, 55,838 poods.
... ... Cotton yarn calculated into about 186,900
-------
Total cotton, 242,738
Average raw cotton imports of 1839-40-41 355,673
Id. of cotton yarn calculated into cotton, 643,300
-------
Total cotton, 998,973

The ratio of increase in the cotton manufacture of Russia, for the same
term of eighteen years, was therefore considerably more than fourfold.
And this steady but extraordinary superiority of Russian progression
took place in the face of all those prosperity years, when, from 1833 to
1838, the British cotton manufacture was stimulated, and bloated to
excess, with the high prices resulting from the flash bank-paper and
loan system of the United States, and the mad joint-stock banking freaks
of Lancashire.

The average import and consumption of raw cotton in Russia, and of yarn
calculated into cotton, was at the rate, on the average of the three
years cited, of about, 35,963,000 lbs. per annum;

Which approximates the position of the Russian with that of the cotton
manufacture of France as existing in the year 1818, when the consumption
of raw cotton is officially stated at, 16,974,159 kilogrammes;

And with that of the cotton manufacture of the United States in 1828,
when the quantity consumed at home was stated at about, 35,359,000 lbs.

It will still be insisted, doubtless, as all along it has never failed
to be the cuckoo-note of unreflecting theorists, that the manufactures
of Russia have flourished, and are flourishing, in spite of protection;
that the only effect of protection is to repress their growth and mar
their perfection. The assertion stands ready-made, and ever the stock on
hand; it is a rash and blindfold speculation upon chance and futurity,
at the best; a building without a corner stone; a _chateau-d'Espagne_
nowhere to be found. Where, except in the glowing fictions of
Scheherezade, may the personification of such a phantom be detected?
History, whether ancient or modern, may be ransacked in vain for one
footprint of the realised existence and miraculous economical prodigies
worke