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supplied. In this view the writers referred to are correct. They are right also in supposing that a reduction below present prices, of a cent or two per pound, would be ruinous to India in the present condition of her inland transportation. They desire, very naturally, therefore, that prices should be kept up for the advantage of India, so that its cotton can bear export. But while high prices benefit India, they also enrich the American planter, and afford him inducements to renew the slave trade. Here Great Britain is thrown into a dilemma. The slave trade to America must be prevented, in her opinion, or it will ruin the East Indies. To prevent the renewal of this traffic--to keep up the price of cotton as long as may be necessary, for the benefit of India, and prevent a supply of African slaves from reaching the American planter--is a problem that requires more than an ordinary amount of skill to solve. That skill, if it exists any where, is possessed by British statesmen, and they are now employed in the execution of this difficult task. They are convinced that free labor cannot be found, at this moment, any where in the world, to meet the growing demands for cotton. To supply this increasing demand, a new element must be brought into requisition; or rather old elements must be employed anew. Her cotton spindles must not cease to whir, or millions of the people of Great Britain will starve at home, or be forced into emigration, to the weakening of her strength. The old sources of supply being inadequate, a new field of operations must be opened up--new forces must be brought into requisition in the cultivation of cotton. Slave labor and free labor, both combined, are not now able to furnish the quantity needed. Free labor cannot be increased, at present, in this department of production. Slave labor, therefore, is the only means left by which the work can be accomplished--not slave labor to the extent now employed, but to the extent to which it may be increased from the ranks of the scores of millions of the population of Africa. This is the true state of the case; and the important question now agitated is: Who shall have the advantages of this labor? Two fields, only, present themselves in which this additional labor can be employed--Africa and America. Great Britain is deeply interested in limiting it to Africa, which she can only do by preventing a renewal of the slave trade to America: for she takes it for g
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