st the oft-repeated formula of the
Mussulman's faith, "There is no God but Allah, and Mahomet is his
Prophet," while in the youthful West a new cry, as fully believed, not
less devout, and scarcely less often repeated, arises from one great
and influential portion of the political and social thinkers of this
country,--the cry that "There is no King but Cotton, and the African is
its High-Priest." According to the creed of philosophy, philanthropy,
and economy in vogue among the sect whose views take utterance in this
formula, King Cotton has now reigned supreme over the temporal affairs
of the princes, potentates, and people of this earth for some thirty
years. Consequently, it is fair to presume that its reign has fully
developed its policy and tendencies and is producing its fruit for good
or evil, especially in the land of its disciples. It is well, therefore,
sometimes to withdraw a little from the dust and smoke of the battle,
which, with us at least, announces the spread of this potentate's power,
and to try to disentangle the real questions at issue in the struggle
from the eternal complications produced by short-sighted politicians and
popular issues. Looking at the policy and tendency of the reign of King
Cotton, as hitherto developed and indicated by its most confidential
advisers and apostles and by the lapse of time in the so-called Slave
States, to what end does it necessarily tend? to what results must it
logically lead?

What is coarsely, but expressively, described in the political slang of
this country as "_The Everlasting Nigger Question_" might perhaps fairly
be considered exhausted as a topic of discussion, if ever a topic was.
Is it exhausted, however? Have not rather the smoke and sweat and dust
of the political battle in which we have been so long and so fiercely
engaged exercised a dimming influence on our eyes as to the true
difficulty and its remedy, as they have on the vision of other angry
combatants since the world began? It is easy to say, in days like these,
that men seem at once to lose their judgment and reason when they
approach this question,--to look hardly an arm's length before
them,--to become mere tools of their own passions; and all this is true,
and, in conceding it all, no more is conceded than that the men of the
present day are also mortal. How many voters in the last election,
before they went to the polls, had seriously thought out for themselves
the real issue of the conte