Causes of the Distress in Lancashire. 
 
 TO 7TP T^V 'TTTF mSTRICT CONFERENCE OF THE CHESHIRE AND LANCASHIRE FOREIGN AFFAIRS 
 
 ME^ilOIR DRAWN COMMITTEES ASSEMBLED AT MANCHESTER, JULY 6, 1862. 
 
 ■ 
 
 Sistu'ess lias overtalten tho operatives en- 
 gaged in the cotton manufacture. Mills 
 workshops have been put on short time, and 
 many have been entirely closed. The work- 
 people have been compelled to use the small 
 sums they had stored up for support in their 
 old age, and the less fortunate or provident 
 have been compelled to accept the aid of 
 the benevolent, or seek the assistance of the 
 parish. 
 
 Various plans have been proposed to 
 alleviate or prevent further extension of this 
 distress. Meetings have been held, deputa- 
 tions have had interviews, and Committees 
 have been formed to obtain the suspension of 
 the Labour Test. Relief Committees havebeeu 
 established, soup-kitchens have been opened, 
 and individual benevolence has been exercised 
 unseen and unheard of. _ 
 
 In Lancashire and Cheshire 1700 mills and 
 workshops are engaged in the cotton manu- 
 facture, and give employment to 350,000 
 hands. By the last returns only about two 
 in every seven of these mills were working 
 full time. Scarcely two in every seven of the 
 hands were earning a full week’s wages ; four 
 in every seven were working short time, and 
 or e in every seven was wholly unemployed. 
 At the beginning of last year 50,000 bales of 
 ;otton per week wmre consumed : the con- 
 sumption is now reduced to 25,000, and even 
 hat quantity must speedily be diminished. 
 
 The stock of cotton in Liverpool on the 
 J7th of June, 1861, was 1,123,300 bales ; at 
 the end of June 1862 it was reduced to 213,340 
 bales. The quantity expected to arrive by 
 the end of this year is 600,000 bales. This 
 gives the total of 813,340 bales to meet a 
 consumption of 25,000 per w'eek, and an 
 export of 5000. 
 
 With our present diminished consumption 
 we shall therefore have consumed our entire 
 Aock by the end of the year, and be wholly 
 dependant on arrivals. 
 
 Four-fifths of the cotton used in our fac- 
 tories is obtained from those States which are 
 now overrun by the contending Federal and 
 Confederates’ armies. In an Address issued 
 by the Manchester Foreign Affairs Associa- 
 tion, at the time of its formation,five years ago, 
 the position to which we now find ourselves 
 reduced was foreseen and urged upon the 
 attention of the people of this district. It 
 was then said, February 6, 1857 : — 
 
 its cause their discrimination has failed to discover. 
 The Turkish Empire, at half the distance, offers a 
 still more promising field ; there a commercial 
 system of restriction imposed by England has placed 
 a duty on exports amounting to prohibition. It, 
 therefore, the supply of raw material for the mills ot 
 Lancashire depends on the acts of a foreign country, 
 which our Government has done everything to ex- 
 asperate and to drive into an alliance with, or depen- 
 dence on. Russia, it is because we have neglected 
 India, and excluded Turkey. An insurrection tii the 
 Slave States cannot he more ditUcult to determine by diplo- 
 matic means than the insurrections which have m our 
 times tivice changed the fate of France. There still 
 remains behind the not impossible cccurrence ot an 
 unfavourable season on that one spot, and which 
 may, even without human art or agency, snap the 
 sinews of the commercial existence of this land. 
 This is, therefore, a question of life or death to evmj 
 Lancashire operative. It may cost him some trouble 
 to look into; but it is worth some trouble to save 
 his home from famine.” 
 
 “ Of the twenty-five millions worth of cotton 
 annually consumed by Great Britain we are depen- 
 dent on the slave-holding states of America for 
 twenty millions. A war with the 'United States, a 
 slave insurrection, would bring on Manchester a 
 worse fate than that of Canton. Yet the United 
 States is not the only country in the world from 
 which cotton can be obtained. It is impossible to 
 imagine any concern of deeper moment for the British 
 Government than that of opening up other supplies. 
 England, besides, is mistress of India, and is bound 
 to leave nothing untried to increase its productions 
 and to improve the condition of its inhabitants. The 
 people of Manchester are at least fully aware of the 
 nfcative value of the Government in that respect, 
 ^at inertness their efforts have failed to remove ; 
 
 The value of these words consists, first, in 
 their having been uttered at a time when 
 few thought it possible that the operatives of 
 Lancashire would ever be reduced to the 
 state of wretchedness they now' endure, and, 
 secondly, in their indicating the means 
 whereby that state might be avoided, or, 
 being arrived at, could be remedied. The 
 voice of w'arning was disregarded, and the 
 penalty is now being paid. But sufiering 
 has not brought forth wisdom, for the cotton- 
 producing States having rebelled, the supply 
 of cotton being cut off, and starvation being 
 brought on Lancashire, an agitation is com- 
 menced to induce the G-overnment to recog- 
 nise the Confederate States as a separate and 
 independent nation. How cotton can come 
 out of this act is as yet wholly unexplained. 
 
 Fourteen months since, those States w’ere 
 acknowledged by the English Government as 
 a belligerent Power and as having belligerent 
 rights, and it subsequently recognised the 
 Government of those States as an inde- 
 pendent Power, capable of forming compacts 
 and Treaties, by instructing Mr. Buncn, our 
 Consul at Charlestown, to negotiate with it 
 for the purpose of obtaining its adhesion to 
 the Declaration of Paris. The demand for 
 recognition is also accompanied by one for 
 medfation. Mediation is arbitration ;* arbi-_ 
 tration may take place on the consent of 
 both the contending parties ; it occurs only 
 at a time when both are exhausted, and 
 neither sees a prospect of success ; it can 
 only be accepted at the hand of an impartial 
 judge, and could not possibly be accompanied 
 by any act on the part of the arbiter which 
 constitutes a direct denial of the claims put 
 forth by one of the disputants. Arbitration 
 cannot yet succeed, for the Government of 
 Washington w'ould scout the idea of sub- 
 mitting its claims to arbitration. Nor is 
 either party exhausted : both anticipate ulti- 
 mate success. England is not an impartial 
 judge, and the formal act of recognition would 
 be to brand with injustice the conduct of the 
 Northern States and repel all confidence 
 they might have reposed in our impartiality. 
 But that confidence does not exist : they re- 
 
 member our conduct in the Trent affair, and 
 have justly accused us of raising the Southern 
 States to the position of belligerents before 
 they had won a battle or put a ship-of-war 
 or a privateer to sea. In a despatch from 
 Mr. Sewaed to Mr. Adams, dated April 10, 
 1861, Mr. Sewaud says : — 
 
 “ If, as the President does not at all apprehend, 
 you shall unhappily find Her Majesty’s Govern- 
 ment tolerating the application of the so-called Se- 
 ceding States, or wavering about it, you will not 
 leave them to suppose for a moment that they can 
 grant that application and remain the friends of the 
 United States. You may even assure them promptly, 
 in that case, that if they determine to recognise they 
 may at the same time prepare to enter into alliance with 
 the enemies of this Republic. You alone will represent 
 your country at London, and you will represent Uie 
 whole of it there. When you arc asked to divide 
 that duty with others, diplomatic relations between 
 the Government of Great Britain and tliis Govern- 
 ment will be suspended, and will remain so until it 
 shall be seen which of the two is most strongly en- 
 trenched in the confidence of their respective nations 
 and of mankind.”— iVor«/j America, No. II., p- 40. 
 
 Our experience of the character of media- 
 tion, as practised by the present Prime 
 Minister, proves it to be exercised to Eng- 
 land’s detriment. Never was there a case 
 in which the people of England were more 
 desirous that their Government should me- 
 diate, than in that of Austria and Hungary 
 in 1848-9. Mediation was then solicited 
 and refused; when compliance was made 
 to the request it was a day too late, and 
 a day afterward it could not have been 
 offered. Again, when Austria offered to 
 submit the matter between herself and 
 Chahles Albert to the mediation of 
 England, the Foreign Secretary refused. 
 In the present case our mediation has not 
 been sought. For England to act now, 
 therefore, would not be to mediate but to 
 intervene; intervention would be war; war 
 with the North to get cotton from the 
 South. 
 
 But does any one imagine that any act of 
 intervention would take place without a 
 criminal intent, or nnder a belief that it 
 would lead to the production of cotton from 
 the Confederate States to set our mills in 
 operation? If so, it must be because he 
 is entirely ignorant of the character and 
 consequences of past acts of intervention on 
 the part of this country in the affairs of 
 other nations. He would also exhibit an 
 equally culpable ignorance or forgetfulness 
 of two facts patent to all : First ; the stores 
 of cotton in the vicinity of those places 
 which the Federal forces have approached 
 have invariably been destroyed. A late let- 
 ter from New Orleans says : — 
 
 “ Make up your mind to one thing, in so far as 
 Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas are con- 
 cerned, every bale of cotton will be burned so soon 
 as Northern forces appear, and if any man tries to 
 save his cotton, his neighbours will burn it for him. 
 The feeling is: if we are not to have our own way, 
 no money shall be made out of us by any one else. 
 I Already, from the most reliable accounts, one million 
 bales of cotton are burnt between here and Memphis 
 ^ —in short, all cotton along the river banks!” 
 
 . M.di.Uon I...g.li.tl«ncona.,t.a by . third p.rty. Arbilr.to ia th. .baol.l. d.ci jan by a third party of point, submitt.d to it by the parti., at v.ri.nco 
 
2 
 
 In those few places where the seed could 
 be sown, it has been done in such small quan- 
 tities as will produce little more cotton than 
 will supply the individual wants of the planters 
 for seed and home spun ; therefore, if the vast 
 armies of the North were withdrawn, or swept 
 from the soil of the South, and their navies 
 recalled from her ports, we should be unable 
 to obtain an immediate supply of cotton. In 
 twelve months hence we should be in pre- 
 cisely the same position, because of the very 
 small amount of seed sown. Two years must 
 therefore elapse, even under the most favour- 
 able circumstances, before our ordinary supply 
 could be resumed. 
 
 In addition to the continued scarcity of 
 cotton we should have diminished employ- 
 ment, dear bread, and increased taxes. Eng- 
 land is dependent upon foreign countries 
 for one-third of the bread of her popu- 
 lation. By the diplomatic action of the Ca- 
 binet of St. Petersburg, and the criminality 
 of oiu- public servants, four of the great grana- 
 ries of the world — Africa, Turkey, Hungary, 
 and Poland — are closed to us as sources of 
 supply, and the pi’incipal part of our imported 
 corn comes from the United States and 
 from Eussia. Intervention and war with 
 the United States would deprive us of the 
 grain exported from thence, and would re- 
 duce us to dependance on Eussia for nearly 
 one-third of our bread. 
 
 A conflict M'ith the United States would 
 greatly affect our trade. United States pri- 
 vateers would prey upon our commerce, but 
 England could not issue a single letter of 
 marque. Everyone knows that operations 
 of war are not conducted without funds. 
 Our taxation has in a few years risen from 
 fort}’’ to seventy millions sterling annually. 
 Lord BROtroiiAM has said the national debt 
 is a pledge of peace — surely a national 
 expenditure of 72,000,000?. ought to be a 
 pledge for non-intervention. We, never- 
 theless, find some of the working classes of 
 Lauchashire, in the bewilderment by which 
 they are surrounded, and the ignorance in 
 which they are enveloped, lending themselves 
 to this cry for mediation which is led by men 
 who are merely endeavouring to provide 
 grounds of justification to the servants of the 
 Crown for interfering in the internal con- 
 cerns of independent States, and in such 
 a way as must lead to a disturbance of our 
 commercial relations with the whole world. 
 
 Mr. Uequhakt has pointed out that 
 wherever a country exists that produces raw 
 produce, there England sends her agents to 
 buy, and Eussia her emissary to convulse. 
 This remark applies no less to the United 
 States than any other country. If those 
 States have hitherto enjoyed a lengthened 
 period of prosperity, it was because of their 
 commercial position. 
 
 In relating a conversation between himself 
 and Prince GouxsciiAKorF, Mr. Appleton, 
 the United States Minister at the Court of 
 St. Petersburg, says the Prince replied : “ It 
 (the U.S.) is the only commercial counter- 
 poise in the world to Great Britain, and 
 Eussia would do nothing, therefore, to 
 diminish its just power and influence.” 
 
 This is the reason why t!ie power of the 
 United States has been fostered by Eussia. 
 
 That fostering care needs no longer to be 
 exercised. Three-quarters of a century ago 
 Eussia formed the Armed Neutrality against 
 England. Her perseverance in the advocacy 
 of the principles there enunciated has been 
 rewarded by success. England is bound by 
 the Declaration of Paris not to employ her 
 maritime strength in covering the seas with 
 her privateers in time of w'ar and seizing 
 her enemies’ goods. Eussia, therefore, does 
 not fear England, the time for convulsion 
 in the United States has arrived, and the in- 
 stitution of Slavery is to be the means 
 whereby it shall be effected. In his first 
 interview with Mr. Clay on his arrival at 
 St. Petersburg, the Emperor said “that in 
 addition to all former ties we were bound 
 together by a common sympathy in the com- 
 mon cause of emancipation .” — North Ame- 
 rica, No. II., p. 256. 
 
 This was pointed out nine years ago by 
 Mr. Uequhaet, when he said : “ It is true 
 that the United States are not emasculated 
 by a Cabinet, and may escape her control ; 
 but they will not do so upon their own soil. 
 "When she brings down upon them a compli- 
 cation involved in their local or international 
 passions, they will be helpless.” 
 
 Another object is accomplished by the 
 agitation for mediation : the attention of the 
 people is diverted from those treasonable acts 
 of the public servants by which the prevail- 
 ing distress has been mainly produced. The 
 questions, “ Wliy is Lancashire dependent 
 upon America for her cotton ?” “ How is it 
 that England is dependent upon the United 
 States and Eussia for her imported corn ?” 
 involve an inquiry into the mysteries of 
 diplomacy. 
 
 The cotton manufacturer has been de- 
 pendent upon America for his raw material, 
 while vast tracts of territory in India were 
 producing cottons little inferior to those of 
 the United States, wdiich could be bought on 
 the spot at l^d. per pound, or about half the 
 cost of American cotton at the place of pro- 
 duction. Carriage to the seaboard and 
 freight io England, however, gave it an in- 
 ferior position in our market, and prevented 
 it from competing witli the American cotton 
 produced at greater cost. While England 
 has been preaching “ free trade,” and Eng- 
 lish capital, skill, and enterprise have been 
 spent in uniting together cities and nations 
 by railways, electric telegraphs, and fleets of 
 splendid and powerful steam-ships, so that 
 the most insiguifleant corner of the earth has 
 felt their influence, the Government of Eng- 
 land, holding the destinies of India in its 
 hand, have neglected the roads, rivers, and 
 harbours of that country'', until the transit 
 over a few miles doubles and trebles the cost 
 of heavy produce. Neglect is not the sum 
 total of criminality : obstacles have been 
 placed in the way of freedom of exchange. 
 Taking the distance from Bombay to Liver- 
 pool at 11,500 miles, aird from New Orleans 
 at 6000, it will be seen that the cotton of 
 India travels double the distance travelled by 
 American cotton. If, however, Indian cotton 
 were no longer obliged to go round by the 
 Cape of Good Hope, but could pass through 
 Egypt by the Suez Canal, the sea voyage from 
 InEa would be reduced to about 6500 miles. 
 
 or nearly the same distance as from New 
 Orleans to Liverpool. This reduction of the 
 sea voyage by 5000 miles in length and about 
 six weeks in duration, and the cc^wequent 
 reduction in the cost of all articles at the 
 place of consumption, applies to everything 
 produced in India and the East and con- 
 sumed in England, and to everything made 
 in England and used in India and the East. 
 
 Engineers have long ago told us that a 
 canal across the Isthmus of Suez is a feasible 
 project — history tells us one has already had 
 existence. Capitalists have long been pre- 
 pared to produce the necessary funds, and 
 commercial men have advocated the project, 
 but opposition existed in a quarter where only 
 one man anticipated it. Nine years ago Mr. 
 Urqtjhaet said; — 
 
 “It will pass belief that an English Minister 
 should have opposed such a work; but what can I 
 urge more than I have done? I have shown the 
 interest of Russia, the dependence in every case of 
 the Minister; I have referred to facts, I have given 
 names. If what I say is not tlie truth, it must be 
 contradicted ; if not contradicted, it must be that 
 contradiction is impossible. These details have been 
 published before, and have not been contradicted. 
 Unless it was an object to prevent the canal, must 
 it not have been made? It is a case in which there 
 is no middle course .” — Progress of Russia, p. 429. 
 
 Eour years later tbe English Minister here 
 alluded to spoke, not to contradict, but to 
 confirm the correctness of the judgment here 
 expressed. He then said, July 7, 1857 : — 
 
 “Eor the last fifteen years Her Majesty’s Govern- 
 ment have used all the influence they possess at 
 Constantinople AND in Egypt to prevent the scheme 
 from being carried into execution,” 
 
 Though want of cotton is the principal, i 
 is not the on^ cause of distress. Thos 
 causes are numerous, "^nd are to be found 
 in the secret and mysterious acts of the Go 
 vernment : they consist in suffering the vio- 
 lation of British rights in foreign countries 
 (by the Eussian tariff" on Poland, and the 
 French tariff on Algiers) ; imposing treaties 
 carrying high export duties on the produce 
 of foreign countries (Turkey and Morocco), 
 submitting to illegal blockades (Mexico aud 
 Buenos Ayres), carrying on unjust and ille- 
 gal wars (China, Persia, Affghanistan, &c.), 
 convulsing, by diplomatic action, countries 
 available as sources of supply, or as mar- 
 kets for sale (Mexico, the Eepublics of Eio 
 de la Plata, Naples, Sicily, and the Ottoman 
 Empire), aud neglecting or frustrating trea- 
 ties of commerce, and thus disabling us from 
 profiting by the reduction of import duties 
 in 1842 and subsequently. 
 
 If, then, the cotton manufacturer has to 
 close his mill, and the operatives of Lanca- 
 shire are starving, it is because they have 
 been heedless of those things on which their 
 bread depends, and have thus fostered the 
 plans of those who are plotting against their 
 prosperity and. the country’s existence. Pe- 
 riods of panic and distress will continue to 
 occur so long as that heedlessness exists ; as 
 the only means by which to avert their oc- 
 currence we invite our fellow-countrymen to 
 a participation in the duties of citizenship, 
 by attention to public affairs. 
 
 By order of the Conference, 
 
 Joseph Foden, Secretary. 
 
 Hall-street, Greenheys, Mancheste 
 
 » 
 
3 
 
 Cotton from India, 
 
 From the Fkjse Press of August 6, 1862. 
 
 ‘Whitn’ it was said, years ago, “England will 
 only know the value of India when she has 
 lost it,” it was intended to be conveyed that 
 India possessed a value not suspected, and it 
 was intended to be insinuated that English- 
 men were — “ blind mice.” Only the meaning 
 was not taken. 
 
 The cotton supply from America having, 
 fallen short ; when the announcement has 
 been made that cotton of the finest quality has 
 come from India, and the geographic ac- 
 quirements of the people have informed them 
 tliat India is very large, and that the way to it 
 by Suez is comparatively short, the application 
 of the proverb is both clear and immediate ; 
 the reader requires not so much as a go-cart 
 to say to himself, “ Poor blind mice ! ” If 
 of a reflective turn of mind, he will add, “ fit 
 to be cut up with a carving-knife.” 
 
 India is not a solitary instance. Blindness 
 does not consist in not seeing a particular 
 tree or a certain house, but in the paralysis 
 and obscuration of the nerves which convey 
 to the thinking part of the man the impres- 
 sions made by external objects on the visual 
 organ. England learns the value of whatever 
 she possesses only after she has lost it. But 
 this blindness is not the result of the inability 
 of the nerves to convey impressions to the 
 brain, but of the suppression of the brain 
 itself. This is a phenomen which never can 
 manifest itself in individual existences, be- 
 cause when the brain goes life goes too. An 
 aggregate body takes some time to dissolve 
 after the brain is gone, and even exhibits in 
 all its members for a time the lively and 
 hilarious activity of maggots. 
 
 That this solution of the mystery is the 
 true one is capable of demonstration. A 
 blind man may remain in ignorance of cir- 
 ciunstances passing before his eyes, but his 
 blindness will not prevent him from knowing 
 the words he utters or the acts he performs. 
 Now England is in one and the same igno- 
 rance of the language she uses, of the steps 
 she takes, of the blows she strikes, of the hits 
 she receives, as of the objects presented to 
 her eyes. 
 
 She has been very busy for some twenty- 
 five years in preventing the culture of cotton 
 in India. She has been for twenty years 
 busy in stopping the opening of a passage, 
 which would bring the cotton produced in 
 India six thousand miles nearer to her (the 
 Canal of Suez). She has been for seventeen 
 years busy in opening a communication 
 through Central America, for the United 
 States to supplant our exports to the Indian 
 Seas, and so to diminish the quantity of raw 
 cotton supplied to England, or to lay upon it 
 an export duty. This practice of being igno- 
 rant of what she is about has become chronic : 
 her present Premier told her thirty-two years 
 ago, that “ she only Tcnew her own acts hy the 
 news which reached her from ahroad." On 
 becoming minister himself the ensuing year, 
 he completed the experiment by preventing 
 her from knowing what she did, even by 
 news reaching her from abroad. 
 
 That the brain is itself gone, is further 
 shown in this, that when at length it learns 
 what it has been doing all these years, and 
 learns it, not through its organs but through 
 its flesh, being punched and jammed up by 
 the results of what it has been doing, it does 
 not proceed to do what a brain would do, 
 namely, to consider the causes, in order that 
 it might find the remedy, but the poor in- 
 fatuated lungs and lips shout out, “ Glorious 
 news from India !” “ Eeform of Parliament !” 
 “ Monetary Crisis !” “ Crisis got over by sus- 
 pension of Bank Act !” besides a great many 
 other insane things. 
 
 Lord Dalhotjsie, in that minute which 
 caps every other exhibition of a tongue 
 wagging without a brain behind it, gives, as 
 one of the reasons for the annexation of 
 Berar, that that territory is very valuable for 
 the growth of cotton ! 
 
 We have now a request to make to the 
 reader, whom we have been entertaining with 
 the view of this madwoman’s antics ; let him 
 make us some compensation by following the 
 subjoined statement ; 
 
 THE SDEZ CANAL AS AEFECTING THE FOOD OF 
 
 LANCASHIRE AND THE TRANQUILLITY OF ENG- 
 LAND. 
 
 The Zeit, Prussian journal, has published (in 
 1857) two ai'ticles on the Suez Canal. The first, 
 after pointing out the want, from the remotest 
 periods, of a direct intercourse between the East 
 and the West, contains an historical account of 
 the canal from the first attempts of the Pharaohs 
 until the labours of the International Commission, 
 and of M. de Lesseps, to realise this great deside- 
 ratum. The article treats of the English and 
 Turkish Governments with respect to the Suez 
 Canal. Thp Zeit is not correct in its views respect- 
 ing Turkey, losing sight of the circumstance that, 
 although the Porte has not given its sanction, it 
 has nevertheless approved of the undertaking in 
 an official letter published two years before. The 
 Prussian journal admits that the Suez Canal must 
 render Constantinople one of the most important 
 ports in the world. 
 
 The Zeit regards the opposition of English 
 statesmen as very strange, seeing that the com- 
 pletion of the canal has comparatively much 
 more importance for England than for any other 
 country, besides the immense utility it would 
 have in a political point of view for the mainte- 
 nance of her dominions in the East. There is, 
 however, another circumstance which should ex- 
 ercise even a greater influence than the tenure 
 of the English possessions — that is, the cotton 
 question. 
 
 “The material development of England” (says 
 the Zeit)^ “ the dominant position she occupies in 
 the world, her national wealth, have all their central 
 nucleus in the cotton question. There can be no 
 doubt but that it is a great drawback to England 
 to be obliged to take seven-eighths of her supplies 
 from America, when she lias in India a soil capable 
 of supplying the raw material ; and that even the 
 insufficient quantity India produces at present 
 should be hampered by a long voyage round the 
 Cape. On the other hand, the Americans begin 
 to find it an advantage to manufacture the raw 
 material, instead of shipping it to Europe and 
 getting it returned in the shape of manufactured 
 goods ; since by manufacturing at home a saving is 
 effected in the transport charges, duty, commission, 
 
 &c. Now, though wages in America are still too 
 high to admit of a successful competition with 
 British manufactures, it must not be lost sight of 
 that the Government may at any time raise the 
 export duty, with a view of protecting national in- 
 dustry. Nor must the circumstance be overlooked 
 that the Americans intend establishing a military 
 route along the western coast of the United States 
 to an important port in the Pacific Ocean. Ame- 
 rican commerce is busy in preparing new outlets 
 to China and the Philippine Islands, &c., with the 
 aid of which the Americans will enter into very 
 strong competition with England in their most 
 important ports — Canton, Bombay, and Calcutta. 
 The voyage from America to India across the Pacific 
 Ocean, when the canal of tfte Isthmus of Panama is 
 established, will he forty per cent, shorter than the 
 present route hy the Gape of Good Hope. Therefore, 
 if England rejects an enterprise which w’dl give it 
 an advance of 3000 nautical miles over the Ame- 
 rican shipping, and which would reduce the voyage 
 from London to Calcutta to thirty-six days, how 
 will she be able to stand against a competition in 
 cotton goods with a rival who, besides possessing 
 the advantage of being able to furnish the raw 
 material from forty to fifty per cent, cheaper, has 
 that of less costly transport ? Under these cir- 
 cumstances, would it not be more profitable for 
 England to leave a portion of her commerce with 
 China and India to the ports in the Mediterranean, 
 such as Marseilles, Trieste, Genoa, Venice, &c-, 
 rather than risk the loss of her commerce with 
 those vast territories? 
 
 “No other country can hope to derive so much 
 benefi^J’i^fm the Suez Canal as England. ^ At 
 present, the only obstacle to the triumph of science 
 over what has been allowed to exist for forty 
 centuries, is the narrow-minded and jealous policy 
 of English statesmen.” 
 
 So far the Zeit — that is to say, the Times of 
 Prussia, which takes the trouble to inform Eng- 
 land of her real interests and her real dangers, and 
 especially of these two — the possibility of an 
 American export duty on cotton, and of the con- 
 vulsion of British trade in the East by American 
 exports from the western side of their continent, 
 whether transported by rail or by the projected 
 Panama Canal. Beside this statement, we beg to 
 place what has been so often pointed out in these 
 pages— that the Panama Canal has been urged by 
 the same statesman who for twenty years has 
 thwarted the Suez Canal ; that the Panama Canal 
 was used to thwart the Suez Canal, and as we have 
 shown by figures, would be injurious to British 
 interests, by giving an immense superiority to 
 American trade. The Statesman, then, who has 
 frustrated the one object and urged the other — 
 the first being considered by the Zeit as almost 
 exclusively advantageous to England, and the 
 second as ruinous to her — cannot be logically de- 
 fined as a “ narrow-minded” man, as certainly his 
 course cannot be described as a “jealous policy.” 
 In all the equations brought for solution to the 
 statesmen and politicians of Europe, Lord Pal- 
 merston is the .r, or the quantity which remains 
 unknown, until the calculation is properly worked 
 out. The operation, indeed, consists solely in the 
 X being unknown. 
 
 Now let us turn to the Times of England, where, 
 perhaps, wo may find the x even without the 
 trouble of the calculation. On the Cth of No- 
 vember, 1857, it writes as follows: — 
 
 “ A canal joining the Atlantic and Pacific oceans is every 
 day becoming more and more a necessity. Tlie Americana 
 can hardly reconcile themselves to the notion tliat the 
 route from New York to San Francisco is always to he 
 round Cape Horn ; nor can we help seeing that the 
 
4 
 
 nearest way to our Australian Cohnvs is across the Gulf 
 of Mexico. It seems now high timt to think about this 
 great work, which we believe was once proposed by the 
 United States Government, and cordially approved by 
 our own. But, whether the canal is to be in Nicaragua 
 or at Panama, it is necessary that the whole region 
 should be tranquillised,” &c. 
 
 It is impossible that whoever wrote these lines 
 should not have been fully aware of all that was 
 known to, and declared by, the Zeit. These lines 
 ere written for the concealment of those alarm- 
 g truths, and to advance a scheme for the sacri- 
 ficing of British commerce in the East, for the 
 driving of the mills of Lancashire out of work, 
 for the convulsion of England herself. Whose 
 design can this be ? Not of the Times in its 
 visible character of a commercial speculation ; not 
 of the English Government, as composed of men 
 whose fortunes must sink in the ruin thus pre- 
 pared — It is the design of the man who was made 
 Foreign Minister by the influence of the Russian 
 Ambassadress over Lord Grey, and who, without 
 associate, councillor, or confidant in England, has 
 obtained the mastery over England, being himself 
 in dread of every individual that walks her soil, 
 should that individual become cognisant of his pur- 
 poses, or of the bond held over him by that foreign 
 power who has made him what he is. 
 
 has passed on the subject except that Lord 
 Palmeeston contradicted in June, 1858, the 
 statement that he had made in July, 1857, 
 that he had for fifteen years opposed tlie 
 cutting of the Suez Canal. Even this con- 
 tradiction did not excite suspicion.* 
 
 What appears mother journals diminishes 
 in value with time ; what is published in these 
 columns increases in interest in exact propor- 
 tion to the time that has elapsed. In a 
 Russian history of triumphs achieved, the 
 despatches which laid down beforehand the 
 results to be afterwards attained, would find 
 their place in the narrative just as much as 
 the events themselves. Everybody who knows 
 anything knows that in these times events 
 never happen, but things are done. What is 
 done is done because it is planned, and what 
 one person can plan another person possessed 
 of his intentions can predict. No real history 
 can be written of the fortunes of England 
 which does not record these predictions and 
 the more so as they are written with the con- 
 stant aim of falsifying themselves by the 
 acceptance of the warnings given. 
 
 These lines have not been written for the 
 present occasion. Five years have elapsed 
 since they were penned,* five years during 
 which the exposition has been of no avail. 
 Five years during w'hich the course pointed 
 out and denonnced has been followed, not 
 only without arousing public resistance, but 
 without awakening individual suspicion. In 
 adapting it for the present occasion, we have 
 altfred to the present date the number of 
 years during which this course of perfidy has 
 continued. During these five years nothing 
 
 See Free Press for Ilsth and 11th November, 1857. 
 
 STSTEJIATIC RESISTANCE TO THE GROWTH OE 
 COTTON. 
 
 (^From the Times, of June 27, 1857.) 
 
 The Court of Directors allow that were the 
 
 * THE SUEZ CANAL. 
 
 Lord Palmerston, July 7, 1857. 
 
 " For the last fifteen years Her Majesty’s Govern- 
 ment have used all the influence they possess at Con- 
 stantinople AND in Egypt to prevent the scheme from 
 being carried into execution.” 
 
 Lord Palmerston, June 1, 1858. 
 
 “ IFe are told now that for fifteen years we have been 
 exercising a moral constraint upon the Sultan of Turkey 
 to prevent him giving his sanction to this scheme. 
 Now, I can assure those who hold that opinion that 
 they are entirely mistaken.” 
 
 valley of Berar connected with Bombay by rail- 
 way, Liverpool could get all the cotton she wants 
 for twopence-halfpenny per pound, all land and 
 sea charges included. The distance is short of 
 four hundred miles. The cost of construction of 
 railways in India is 5000f. a mile, or 2,000,0001 in 
 all, a sum which would be covered by three months 
 of the extra penny to America, or three weeks of 
 the sacrifice occasioned by working short time. It 
 is just four years since this admission was made by 
 the Court of Directors. Since then they have con- 
 trived to construct some fifty miles of the Berar 
 line. The remainder has not so much as been sanc- 
 tioned up to the present hour, and we shall probably 
 have five years’ correspondence before the first bar is 
 laid. Cotton of the very best quality can be pur- 
 chased from the cultivator at from one penny farthing 
 to twopence per pound. About double this is expended 
 in transport charges. A twelvemonth ago a large 
 body of Ratiawar merchants undertook to construct 
 a cotton pier in the Gulf of Cambay, on the ter- 
 ritory of an independent chief, and just opposite 
 Ghora Bunoa, when Government lamented their in- 
 ability to construct one, and leave was refused them 
 by the Bombay authorities. Lord Elphinstone, on 
 visiting the chief of Bhownuggar, in 1854, recom- 
 mended him to construct a pier, to make roads, and 
 to establish cotton presses. The chief replied that 
 all these had long been in his contemplation, that he 
 was quite ready to proceed with them immediately, 
 if Government would only undertake not to strip 
 him of his dominions. A body of Bombay native 
 merchants applied for leave to construct a tide basin 
 for cargo-boats at the Presidency, on any terms or 
 conditions the Government were pleased to impose. 
 Permission was refused them. An irrigation com- 
 pany was established at Bombay in 1854, and half a 
 million of stock immediately applied for at the Pre- 
 sidency. Terms every way satisfactory were granted 
 by the Bombay Government. The survey is now 
 completed, and operations ready to be commenced, 
 when the supreme Government steps in and pro- 
 nounces the terms too advantageous. For tl;e past 
 twelve months the copartnery have been memorial- 
 ising Cannon-row and Leadenhall-street, and apply- 
 ing to Parliament for papers, and that with the 
 cordial concurrence of the Bombay Government, hut 
 have failed up to this hour to obtain any answer a.s to 
 the terms likely to be granted them. 
 
 “TREE PRESS” OFFICE, 4, EAST TEMPLE CHAMBERS, LONDON; AND JOHN HEYWOOD, DEANSGATE, MANCHESTER, 
 
 August 9, 1862# 
 
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