very fairly represented and commented
upon by such religious and secular papers as the Christian Times, the
British Banner, the London Daily News and Chronicle; and even the
_thundering political_ Times seemed disposed, in a half-sarcastic way,
to admit that I was more than half right.

But it is most satisfactory of all to know that the best of the British
abolitionists are now acting, promptly and efficiently, in accordance
with those views, and are determined to develop the resources of the
British empire for the production of cotton by free labor. The thing is
practicable, and not of very difficult accomplishment. It is furthermore
absolutely essential to the success of the antislavery cause; for now
the great practical leading argument for slavery is, _Without slavery
you can have no cotton, and cotton you must and will have_. The latest
work that I have read in defence of slavery (Uncle Tom in Paris,
Baltimore, 1854) says, (pp. 56-7,) "_Of the cotton which supplies the
wants of the civilized world, the south produces 86 per cent.; and
without slave labor experience has shown that the cotton plant cannot be
cultivated_."

How the matter is viewed by sagacious and practical minds in Britain, is
clear from the following sentences, taken from the National Era:--

"COTTON is KING.--Charles Dickens, in a late number of his Household
Words, after enumerating the striking facts of cotton, says,--

"'Let any social or physical convulsion visit the United States, and
England would feel the shock from Land's End to John o'Groat's. The
lives of nearly two millions of our countrymen are dependent upon the
cotton crops of America; their destiny may be said, without any sort 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, and two million mouths would starve for lack of food
to feed them.'

"How many non-slaveholders elsewhere are thus interested in the products
of slaves? Is it not worthy the attention of genuine philanthropists to
inquire whether cotton cannot be profitably cultivated by free labor?"

SOIREE AT WILLIS'S ROOMS--MAY 25.

MR. JOSEPH STURGE took the chair, announcing that he did so in the
absence of the Earl of Shaftesbury, who was prevented from attending.

It was announced that letters had been received from the Duke of
Newcastle and the Earls of Carlisle