ives a condensed statement
of a discussion in the British Parliament, last summer, in which the
condition of cotton culture in Africa was brought out, and its
encouragement strongly urged as a means of suppressing the slave trade,
and of increasing the supplies of that commodity to the manufacturers of
England. S. Fitzgerald, Under Secretary of State, said:

"He did not scruple to say that, looking at the papers which he had
perused, it was to the West Coast of Africa that we must look for that
large increase in our supply of cotton which was now becoming absolutely
necessary, and without which he and others who had studied this subject
foresaw grave consequences to the most important branch of the
manufactures of this country. Our consul at Lagos reported:

"The whole of the Yoruba and other countries south of the Niger, with
the Houssa and the Nuffe countries on the north side of that river, have
been, from all time, cotton-growing countries; and notwithstanding the
civil wars, ravages, disorders and disruptions caused by the slave
trade, more than sufficient cotton to clothe their populations has
always been cultivated, and their fabrics have found markets and a ready
sale in those countries where the cotton plant is not cultivated, and
into which the fabrics of Manchester and Glasgow have not yet
penetrated. The cultivation of cotton, therefore, in the above-named
countries is not new to the inhabitants; all that is required is to
offer them a market for the sale of as much as they can cultivate, and
by preventing the export of slaves from the seaboard render some
security to life, freedom, property, and labor." Another of our consuls,
speaking of the trade in the Bight of Benin in 1856, said:

"'The readiness with which the inhabitants of the large town of
Abbeokuta have extended their cultivation of the cotton plant merits the
favorable notice of the manufacturer and of the philanthropist, as a
means of supplanting the slave trade.'"

"It was worthy of notice that while the quantity of cotton obtained from
America between 1784 and 1791, the first seven years of the importation
into this country was only 74 bales; during the years 1855 and 1856 the
town of Abbeokuta alone exported nearly twenty times that quantity. He
thought he might fairly say that if we succeed in repressing the
slave-trade, as he believed we should, we should in a few years receive
a very large supply of this most important article from the