used for this purpose in India, and, until Whitney's invention, were employed in America, the expense is so great that scarcely any - we believe, indeed, none of this cotton was exported from America while that process was necessary. The whole export in 1793 was only 187,000 lbs., probably consisting exclusively of long-staple cotton. The saw-gin was introduced, and in 1794, the very next year, the export was about decupled — it rose to 1,601,760 lbs. The next year it advanced to 6,276,300 lbs. ; in 1800, it was 17,789,803 lbs. ; in 1810, it was 93,261,462 lbs.; and in 1852, the last year for which we have the returns before us, the export of the short-staple variety alone exceeded one thousand one hundred millions of pounds.

The cotton plant flourishes best in alluvial lands in the neighbourhood of the sea, and cannot endure a mean summer temperature lower than 77° Fahrenheit, or a mean annual temperature lower than 60°. On the Atlantic coast of America, the 35th parallel, and towards the western coast, the 39th, are the most northern latitudes in which it can be cultivated. But no climate is too hot for it. The south-west of Texas, where the mean summer heat is 85°, suits it well. It belongs, therefore, to climates and to soils unfavourable to the constitutions of men of northern descent, if out-door work be required from them. In such climates field labour is disagreeable to all men, and dangerous to whites.

If the Anglo-Americans had been in the situation of an European community, surrounded by powerful nations, and subject to the restraints of international law and of international morality, South Carolina and Georgia, the only cotton-producing districts of the original Confederation, would soon have been fully peopled. Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Delaware, in all of which the white man can work,―would have followed the example of the Northern States, and have gradually emancipated their slaves. Slavery would have been confined to the two Southern States, and would have existed in the mitigated form in which it was seen in our West Indian islands; the cause, of course, of occasional cruelty and of constant oppression and degradation, but free from the worst of all the abominations of modern American slavery, the breeding and exporting system, the system under which the principal use made of men and women is to produce and bring up children, to be torn from them as soon as they attain the age of sale, and never to be seen or heard of again.

But the neighbours of the United States were dependencies of distant empires or semi-barbarous or barbarous republics. France sold to them all her subjects and all her territories in

Louisiana. Spain sold to them Florida. The vast territories which now form Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida were in the possession of their aborigines, Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles, to whom they had for the most part been guaranteed by treaty. But what is the value of a treaty between the weak and the strong, in a country in which the very name of international morality is unknown? The Indians were removed to the north, and a district three times as large as the British Islands was added to the Southern States. Texas was a portion of the defenceless incoherent Mexican republic. American speculators swarmed into it, and got up a rebellion against the central authority. The American Government acknowledged the rebels as an independent nation, and immediately accepted from them a cession of the country. Mexico remonstrated, and was punished for her insolent want of submission by war, defeat, and mutilation.

The United States were thus more than doubled in extent, and, what was more important as respects slavery, the greater part of the newly-acquired territory was so nearly tropical as to be better suited to the coloured races than to the white. Their first acquisition, Louisiana, was already a slave country; so was Florida, but the Mexican Government had abolished slavery in all its dominions, and, except in a few instances among the Cherokees, a negro slave never had existed in the Indian country. As soon, therefore, as the Union was to be increased by the introduction of new States, the question arose whether slaves should be excluded from a soil which, so far as it was peopled, was peopled by freemen. It was first tried in the case of Missouri. The contest began in 1818, and lasted for three years. Twice the House of Representatives voted the exclusion of slaves from the new State. Twice the Senate, which assumes to be the Conservative portion of the American Legislature, and, like its brethren in Europe, is the patron of every old prejudice and abuse, voted their admission. At length the anti-slavery party were deluded into accepting what was called the Missouri compromise, by which Missouri was received as a slave State, but the existing Congress affected to bind their successors by enacting that in future slavery should not be established to the north of latitude 36° 30'.

To understand this contest, we must remember that, in 1808, the African slave trade had ceased. Up to the time it had been vigorously prosecuted. Between 1790 and 1810 the number of slaves increased from 697,897 to 1,191,364, notwithstanding the emancipation of about 120,000 negroes in the Northern States, and notwithstanding the preponderance of

males which is incidental to every migration, voluntary or compulsory. An almost unlimited supply of slaves ceased nearly at the time that the acquisition of a new nearly tropical empire produced an almost unlimited demand.

Few of our readers can be ignorant of the means by which that demand was met. It was met by a new slave trade, more cruel, more degrading, more atrocious, than that which had been abolished. The total number of slaves in Virginia in 1840 was 448,886. During the ten years ending 1850 the slave population of the United States increased at the rate of 28 per cent. The number of slaves in Virginia, therefore, in 1850, ought to have been 574,574; it was only 473,026. Instead of increasing at the rate of 28 per cent., the slaves in Virginia increased at the rate of only 5 per cent. Instead of adding 125,688 to their numbers, they added only 24,140. What became of the missing 101,548? It cannot be answered that they were not born, or that they died. The climate of Virginia is one of the best in the world; the labour in the plantations is light; the negroes are well taken care of. Every traveller admires the number of healthy children. If the natural increase of the slaves in the whole Union was 28 per cent., that in Virginia was probably 35 or 40 per cent.

The question, what became of the missing 101,548 is answered when we look at the rate of increase in the States which are consumers instead of breeders, when we find that in Lousiana the increase was 44 per cent., in Mississippi 57 per cent., and in Arkansas 135 per cent. It is to these States, and to Texas, Alabama, and Florida, that Virginia has exported her human crop; it is from them that she has received, at the low average price of 500 dollars per head, fifty millions of dollars for her 100,000 souls. It was to preserve this trade, that Mexico was robbed of Texas, and afterwards of California and New Mexico; that Cuba is to be snatched and Jamaica to be annexed; and that every new State in which the climate is suited to the negro, is admitted unto the Union as a slave State.

Few things have more surprised the world than the deterioration of the political men of America. When the United States were a mere aggregate of scantily peopled colonies,-when their principal citizens were planters, shopkeepers, and traders, trained up in the narrowness and prejudices, and petty employments of provincial life, they produced statesmen, and negotiators, and administrators, and legislators, whose names will be for ever illustrious in history. Now that they form a great empire, that they possess a large class of men born in

opulence, to whom all the schools and universities of each hemisphere are open, who have leisure to pursue the studies and to acquire the habits of political life, few of their public men would pass in Europe for tolerable second-rates. This downward progress, however, seems now likely to be arrested. We do not expect to see the present tenant of the White House succeeded by a first magistrate inferior to himself in knowledge, in ability, or in statesmanship, or the American diplomatists now resident in the Courts of the Continent, followed by men of less tact, or temper, or good sense.

We believe that the explanation of this strange depravation is to be found in the influence on American parties of the political questions connected with slavery.

A party which aims at producing only one result by only one means, has an enormous advantage over its rivals, who seek to promote the general welfare of their country. Sincerely patriotic parties are necessarily divided. Though they cannot but agree as to the end that is ultimately to be attained, it is equally certain that they will differ as to the means that are to be employed. Their common purpose is one that can be effected only imperfectly. It is composed of many elements, some of them opposed to others; the conduet which promotes the public prosperity in one respect, may impede it in another. A public man has often to choose between incompatible advantages, often to take an alternative of evils. It is difficult to predict the consequences of a new measure, and still more difficult to find believers in the prediction. It is very seldom, therefore, that two parties, each of which desires above all things the general good government of the country, can coalesce. Each is wedded by original disposition, by association, by habit, and by the desire of consistency, to opinions and measures inconsistent with those to which the other is equally chained.

The selfish single-purpose party, to which general politics/ are indifferent, which is ready to ally itself to Freetraders or to Protectionists, to Reformers or to Anti-Reformers, to Puseyites or to Dissenters, becomes powerful by becoming unscrupulous. If Ireland had been an independent country, separated from England, the Ultra-Catholic party, whose only object is the domination of the Clergy and of the Pope, would have ruled her. This is the source of the influence of a similar party in France. The Clerical, or Jesuit, or Popish, or Ultra-montane faction, whatever name we give to it,-has almost always obtained its selfish objects, because those objects are all that it cares for. It supported the Restoration, its priests blessed the insurgents of February 1848, and it now worships Louis

Napoleon. The only condition which it makes is Ecclesiastical and Popish supremacy, and that condition the Governor for the time being of France usually accepts.

Such a party is the Southern party in the United States. Its only object is the retention and extension of slavery and of the internal slave trade. For this purpose, it is ready to ally itself to Whigs or to Tories, to Democrats or to Federalists, to those who wish to raise, or to those who wish to lower, the tariff. But this is a purpose which must excite the fears of every wise man and the detestation of every honest man. All the best men of America, therefore, resist the contamination of such an alliance. They see that Southern faction, by choosing its opportunities, by joining from time to time the party that will accept its terms and can triumph by means of its assistance, generally obtains its objects, rewards its favourites, and excludes its opponents. Most of them are discouraged, and forsake political life for literature or business, or foreign travel; others are cut short in their public career, and forced to resign themselves to provincial or professional eminence. A few, like the distinguished senator whose speech we prefix to this Article, acquire fame in the Senate or in the House of Representatives, but are excluded from office. And what, on this side of the Atlantic, are the prizes of public life, the high political and administrative posts, are generally left to the inferior men, whose ignorance, violence, or incapacity have led those who judge of America only through her public servants, to look on her with unmerited contempt or disgust.

We say unmerited,' because we believe that the public morality of the educated classes in America, who take no part in politics, is generally far superior to that of the great bulk of her statesmen. For the proof of this, we need not go further than to Uncle Tom' itself. It is a purely American work. When it first appeared in the columns of a newspaper, the author looked only to a narrow local circulation. When it was reprinted, the American market only was thought of. Mrs. Stowe did not address herself, like Washington Irving, or Prescott, or Wheaton, to an European public. She wrote only for Americans, and writing for them she poured out her sympathy with the weak and the humble, her indignation against the oppressor, her obedience to justice, and her adoration of liberty, in words as bold and as uncompromising as any that were ever uttered by Milton, or Fox, or Wilberforce. She does not discuss the highest principles of human conduct, she assumes them: she takes for granted that they are not only known to her readers, but professed by them. If Uncle Tom' were still only in manu