ery extension necessary to Western
progress--Increased price of Provisions--More
grain growing needed--Nebraska and Kansas needed
to raise food--The Planters stimulated by
increasing demand for Cotton--Aspect of the
Provision question--California gold changed the
expected results of legislation--Reciprocity
Treaty favorable to Planters--Extended cultivation
of Provisions in the Far West essential to
Planters--Present aspect of the Cotton question
favorable to Planters--London Economist's
statistics and remarks--Our Planters must extend
the culture of Cotton to prevent its increased
growth elsewhere.

THE results of the contest, in relation to Protection and Free Trade,
have been more or less favorable to all parties. This has been an
effect, in part, of the changeable character of our legislation; and, in
part, of the occurrence of events in Europe, over which our legislators
had no control. The manufaturing States, while protection lasted,
succeeded in placing their establishments upon a comparatively permanent
basis; and, by engaging largely in the manufacture of cottons, as well
as woolens, have rendered home manufactures, practically, very
advantageous to the South. Our cotton factories, in 1850, consumed as
much cotton as those of Great Britain did in 1831; thus affording
indications, that, by proper encouragement, they might, possibly, be
multiplied so as to consume the whole crop of the country. The cotton
and woolen factories, in 1850, employed over 130,000 work hands, and had
$102,619,581 of capital invested in them. They thus afford an important
market to the farmer, and, at the same time, have become an equally
important auxiliary to the planter. They may yet afford him the only
market for his cotton.

The cotton planting States, toward the close of the contest, found
themselves rapidly accumulating strength, and approximating the
accomplishment of the grand object at which they aimed--the monopoly of
the cotton markets of the world. This success was due, not so much to
any triumph over the North--to any prostration of our manufacturing
interests--as to the general policy of other nations. All rivalry to the
American planters from those of the West Indies, was removed by
emancipation; as, under freedom, the cultivation of cotton was nearly
abandoned. Mehemet Ali had become im