staple cotton is fine and silky, presenting the
delicate aërial elegance of appearance which is
the characteristic, and the charm, of tropical
vegetation. Usage, the legislator of language,
always calls cotton the fibre of the plant,
although it is well known to be the hair of the
seed, for flax, from Linum usitatissimum,
consists of woody fibres, or tubes, whose membranes
have been thickened by successive layers of
cellulose and sclerogen; and cotton is composed of
the hairs or elongated cells surrounding the
seeds of various kinds of Gossypium,—hairs
which under the microscope seem peculiarly
twisted.

Cotton was in former times cultivated to a
large extent in India. In the Chagos group of
islands in the Indian Ocean the most beautiful
long staple cotton grows naturally. The Chagos
cotton is equal in the delicacy of its appearance,
to the eye at least, to the finest grown anywhere.
The cotton shrub belongs to the mallow tribe
of plants, one of those groups which increase
as we approach the equator; and varieties of the
gossypium species will, it has been ascertained,
thrive anywhere within thirty-five degrees of the
equator. The islands suitable for the cultivation
of the cotton-plant situated within thirty-five
degrees of the equator are innumerable. American
seed no doubt runs too much into leaf in the rich
and moist soils of Bengal, and insects have been
there found to be very destructive; but the
acclimated seed has been profitably cultivated for
years at Coimbatore, Madras, on the Deccan
Candeish, at Nagpore, Hyderabad, and in the
Mahratta country in Central India. There
resided for a few years at Dharwar, in the Southern
Mahratta, an American planter, who
successfully cultivated seven thousand acres where
only six hundred had been previously cultivated.
There is no better short staple cotton than the
cotton of Central India when it has been
properly cleaned. The acclimated seed thrives
admirably on breezy undulating sweeps of
country with a dry gravelly and poor rather
than rich soil. Cotton has been grown at
Singapore and at Visagapatam rivalling the
best Sea Island cotton ever imported into
Great Britain for fineness and flexibility of
fibre. The muslins of Dakka were probably the
finest ever woven or worn. When spread upon
the grass whilst wet with dew, a piece of this
exquisitely fine muslin became invisible. A
lady's robe, consisting of several yards of this
muslin, could be blown away with a breath.
Indian cottons have been produced so fine that
Lancashire manufacturers have mixed them with
the finest Georgian to improve it; and after the
mixture the Indian cotton has still been
distinguishable under the microscope by the superior
straightness and beauty of the fibres. The fact
is, indeed, an established one, that nothing is
needed but greater care in cultivation and skill
in cleaning to make Indian cotton as fine in
fibre and rich in quality as the best ever
produced. In the presence of these facts, he
would be a very hardy disputant who should
deny that if British India does not supply an
abundance of raw cotton, it must be the fault
of the British people, whose business it is to
obtain supplies—in fact, of the cotton interest
themselves; for we will not echo the weak cant
which blames the government, the East India
Company, or the Indian administration, the
British government being always, in fact, in the
end, the government of the British people.

The geographical distribution of the cotton-
shrub is vast. The American eagle, now
dismembered of one of his wings, never has had
sway over any such expanse of territory in which
the cotton-plant is indigenous as still owns the
peaceful rule of the British lion. British cotton
planters have no need to covet any Cuba, nor to
invent a dogma of manifest destiny to palliate
covetous designs or rapacious annexations. To
say nothing of the boundless resources of Africa,
they have only to make a good use of their own
continents and islands, some of the latter being
not merely more suitable for cotton-fields, but
also nearer than the sites of the plantations of
the Carolinians and Georgians.

Somebody once computed that the British
manufacturers paid annually to the American
planters for raw cotton ten millions sterling
more than the natural price. This was, of course,
an enhancement of the value of slaves to a similar
amount. The meaning of the calculation
apparently is, that if Africa and India and the islands
capable of growing cotton had been competing
with Georgia and Carolina, as they ought to
have been, the quantity of cotton bought in one
year would have been obtained for ten millions
less money.

The cotton-growers of the Southern States of
America achieved their pre-eminence in the
market by an amount of energy and enterprise,
perseverance and intelligence, never surpassed
in the history of human industry. The cotton-
shrub was acclimated in America by the negroes
during the last century. Little more than
threescore and ten years ago, when cotton from
Virginia or Carolina first arrived in the port of
Liverpool, it was seized by the officers of customs
upon the plea that cotton was not a product of
America. Not merely had the planters to
compete with countries in which the plant was
indigenous, they had to contend with a scarcity of
labour. They had to surpass all rivals whilst
cultivating an acclimated plant by the labour
of enslaved and imported hands. In spite of a
constitution declaring all men to be free and
equal, and a religion teaching them to do as
they would be done by, they obtained their
supplies of labour by kidnapping it wherever
they could catch it. At Aberdeen, for instance,
on the north-east coast of Scotland, less than a
hundred years ago, little boys were kidnapped
with the connivance of the magistrates of the
burgh, and sold into slavery in Virginia. No
doctrine has been too wild or wicked for
promulgation by these men in vindication of their
pursuits; and they have found naturalists who
have taught for them that all men are not of
one species; philosophers, who have maintained
that civilisation is based on cotton; and Christian