he last man comes and says: "I
have all these qualities, and have them so highly that it is a peculiar
genius"; and genius carries the whole market and gets the highest price.
[Loud applause.] So that both the workman and the merchant are profited
by having purchasers that demand quality, variety, and quantity. Now,
if this be so in the town or the city, it can only be so because it is a
law. This is the specific development of a general or universal law, and
therefore we should expect to find it as true of a nation as of a city
like Liverpool. I know that it is so, and you know that it is true of
all the world; and it is just as important to have customers educated,
Intelligent, moral, and rich out of Liverpool as it is in Liverpool.
[Applause.] They are able to buy; they want variety, they want the very
best; and those are the customers you want. That nation is the best
customer that is freest, because freedom works prosperity, industry,
and wealth. Great Britain, then, aside from moral considerations, has a
direct commercial and pecuniary interest in the liberty, civilization,
and wealth of every nation on the globe. [Loud applause.] You also have
an interest in this, because you are a moral and religious people. ["Oh,
oh!" laughter and applause.] You desire it from the highest motives; and
godliness is profitable in all things, having the promise of the life
that now is, as well as of that which is to come; but if there were no
hereafter, and if man had no progress in this life, and if there were no
question of civilization at all, it would be worth your while to
protect civilization and liberty, merely as a commercial speculation. To
evangelize has more than a moral and religious import--it comes back to
temporal relations. Wherever a nation that is crushed, cramped, degraded
under despotism is struggling to be free, you, Leeds, Sheffield,
Manchester, Paisley, all have an interest that that nation should be
free. When depressed and backward people demand that they may have a
chance to rise--Hungary, Italy, Poland--it is a duty for humanity's
sake, it is a duty for the highest moral motives, to sympathize with
them; but besides all these there is a material and an interested
reason why you should sympathize with them. Pounds and pence join with
conscience and with honor in this design. Now, Great Britain's chief
want is--what?

They have said that your chief want is cotton. I deny it. Your chief
want is consumers. [