from starvation! But England's efforts signally
failed, and the golden apple, fully ripened, dropped into the lap of our
cotton planters.[19] The year that heard Thompson's pompous
predictions,[20] witnessed the consumption of but 445,744,000 lbs. of
cotton, by England; while, fourteen years later, she used 817,998,048
lbs., nearly 700,000,000 lbs. of which were obtained from America!

That we have not overstated her dependence upon our slave labor for
cotton is a fact of world-wide notoriety. _Blackwood's Magazine_,
January, 1853, in referring to the cultivation of the article, by the
United States, says:

"With its increased growth has sprung up that mercantile navy, which now
waves its stripes and stars over every sea, and that foreign influence,
which has placed the internal peace--we may say the subsistence of
millions in every manufacturing country in Europe--within the power of
an oligarchy of planters."

In reference to the same subject, the _London Economist_ quotes as
follows:

"Let any great social or physical convulsion visit the United States,
and England would feel the shock from Land's End to John O'Groats. The
lives of nearly two millions of our countrymen are dependent upon the
cotton crops of America; their destiny may be said, without any kind of
hyperbole, to hang upon a thread. Should any dire calamity befall the
land of cotton, a thousand of our merchant ships would rot idly in dock;
ten thousand mills must stop their busy looms; two thousand thousand
mouths would starve, for lack of food to feed them."

A more definite statement of England's indebtedness to cotton, is given
by McCullough; who shows that as far back as 1832, her exports of cotton
fabrics were equal in value to about two-thirds of all the woven fabrics
exported from the empire. The same state of things, nearly, existed in
1849, when the cotton fabrics exported, according to the _London
Economist_, were valued at about $140,000,000, while all the other woven
fabrics exported did not quite reach to the value of $68,000,000. On
consulting the same authority, of still later dates, it appears, that
the last four years has produced no material change in the relations
which the different classes of British fabrics, exported, bear to each
other. The present condition of the demand and supplies of cotton,
throughout Europe, and the extent to which the increasing consumption of
that staple must stimulate the American planters to its inc