for her
interest that the United States should be weakened? Is it the purpose of
her Government to give our rebels encouragement, step by step, in order
that the American nation may be thrown back to the place it held twenty
years ago?

The Cottonocracy of England, and those who for reasons of political
interest support them, proceed erroneously, we think, when they assume
that American cotton is the chief necessary of English life, and that
without a full supply of it there must ensue great suffering throughout
the British Empire. That it would be better for England to receive her
cotton without interruption may be admitted, without its following that
she must be ruined if there should be a discontinuance of the American
cotton-trade. Men are so accustomed to think that that which is must
ever continue to be, or all will be lost, that it is not surprising that
British manufacturers should suppose change in this instance to be ruin.
They are quite ready to innovate on the British Constitution, because in
that way they hope to obtain political power, and to injure the landed
aristocracy; but the idea of change in modes of business strikes them
with terror, and hence all their wonted sagacity is now at fault.
Lancashire is to become a Sahara, because President Lincoln, in
accordance with the demands of twenty million Americans, proclaims the
ports of the rebels under blockade, and enforces that blockade with a
fleet quite sufficient to satisfy even Lord John Russell's notions as to
effectiveness. We have never believed, and we do not now believe, that
it is in the power of any part of America thus to control the condition
of England. We would not have it so, if we could, as we are sure that
the power would be abused. If America really possessed the ability to
rule England that her cotton-manufacturers assert she possesses, all
Englishmen should rejoice that events have occurred here that promise to
work out their country's deliverance from so degrading a vassalage. But
it is not so, and England will survive the event of our conflict, no
matter what that event may be. The nation that triumphed over the
Continental System of Napoleon, and which was not injured by our Embargo
Acts of fifty years ago, should be ashamed to lay so much stress upon
the value of our cotton-crop, when it has its choice of the lands of the
tropics from which to draw the raw material it requires. As to France,
it would be most impolitic in her to se