divines who have upheld slavery with
arguments from the New Testament! A minority
in the United States, they, until the installation
of President Lincoln, lorded it over the Union.
Clearly enough, they surpassed all other cotton-
growers in consequence of throwing more mind
into their business. Slave labour is not cheap.
The cost of the labour of a coolie in the West
Indies is said to be only tenpence-halfpenny a
day, and the cost of the labour of a slave in
South America or Cuba is estimated at a dollar
a day. But the slave of Carolina and Georgia
is an unrivalled cotton-picker. Carolinian and
Georgian cotton commands the best price,
because it is the best cleaned cotton in the market.
British capitalists who have grown cotton upon
the coasts of Africa, complain that they cannot
get their stupid negroes to pick their cotton
properly. The American cotton-growers have
beaten all the world in the difficult art of cotton-
cleaning. The Indian cultivator sent his
produce to England in a dirty state, and thus paid
more freight for a longer voyage, and got a
less price. But now that prices have improved,
Indian cotton-cleaning has improved in
proportion.

The difficulties of cotton-picking and cleaning
have been the lions in the way of the cultivators
and administrators of India, while the Americans
triumphed over them by skilful manipulations and
ingenious machinery. The Americans owe their
great start to the invention of Whitney's saw-gin,
which has been as beneficial to Georgia as
Arkwright's spinning-jenny has been to Lancashire.
But the saw-gin has, it is said, been found to be
injurious to the staple of the Indian plant.
Excessive heat making the leaves extremely brittle:
they crumble and mix with the cotton
inextricably, and the bractees are still more liable to
foul the fibres in this way than the leaves. In
fact, the knack of cotton-picking consists in
dexterously snatching the hairs away from the seeds
without allowing them to be defiled by the
fragments of broken leaves or bractees. The negroes
of South America, among whom the melodies
sung by the Christy Minstrels and Buckley
Serenaders have arisen, judging from their mirthful
music and sarcastic humour, must be a sharp
and shrewd race, with active brains, quick eyes,
and nimble fingers, making them unrivalled in
picking cotton fibres free from dust and dross.

The directors of the East India Company
professed an anxious desire to promote the cultivation
of cotton for the whole half of a century.
They imported American seed and Whitney gins;
and much ingenuity was expended in adapting
the American gin and in improving the
Indian churka to clean the Indian staples from
their subtile defilements. At the last meeting of
the British Association, a discussion took place
in the section of mechanical science upon the
cotton-cleaning machines, specimens of which
were exhibited to the section. The Indian
churka, the Whitney gin, the roller gin, the
spike-roller gin, and Macarthey's gin, were
discussed with their respective merits and defects.
How important the question of cleaning machines
is, may be inferred from the statement of a gentleman,
who said he had seen cotton selling at
sevenpence a pound, which, if properly cleaned
by an improved roller-gin, would have sold for
two shillings per pound. The Manchester Cotton
Supply Association have had a large number
of Macarthey gins made, and they are forwarding
them to the cotton-producing districts of the
world—dismally joking, meanwhile, about the
cook who had an excellent cooking apparatus and
nothing to cook withal. But if the difficulties
of cotton-cleaning are conquered, the difficulties
of cotton-growing need not alarm anybody.

The officials who formerly ruled India ascribed
their failure in producing cotton not merely to old
churkas, inextricable leaf-dust, hurtful saw-gins,
and a too-variable climate, they accused the
capitalists of India of a want of calculating
foresight and the peasants or ryots of unmalleable
habits. But a committee of the House of
Commons reported, in 1848, that the natives of
India, "when a security of reward is offered to
them, will exert themselves, even to the
abandonment of customs to which they were greatly
attached." This security is now given in the
sale of waste lands lately wisely decreed by the
authorities.

One cause of the different results of cotton-
growing in India and America has been that
British India has been governed by officials,
and the Southern States of America have
been governed by industrials, the Indian planter
being a nobody, and the American planter
his own master in public affairs.
Notwithstanding the neglect of precautionary
measures for the evil day which has come,
Indian cotton has of late years risen in value
from being better prepared, and the quantity
imported has notably increased. During the
past year the quantity imported from the British
East Indies has increased one hundred and
seventy-eight thousand and twenty-two
hundred-weight, for in August, 1860, the quantity
was one hundred and seventeen thousand two
hundred and seventy-six hundred-weight, and in
the corresponding month of the present year it
had reached two hundred and ninety-five
thousand two hundred and ninety-eight hundred-
weight. The machinery now in use in British
cotton-mills is adapted for American cotton, but
suggestions have been made to have it altered
to suit the Indian material.

The energy which enabled the Carolinians,
Virginians, and Georgians to win for themselves
a virtual monopoly, based on a real superiority
in the cultivation of a recently acclimated plant
over rivals residing in countries in which it is
indigenous, and where it had been cultivated for
centuries, are now unhappily devoted to the
prosecution of a miserable war. And the
Americans' difficulty is not merely the opportunity
of the Indian cultivator, it is the opportunity as
well of the Egyptian, the Brazilian, the
Algerine, and the African. Victor or vanquished
upon the battle-field, the Confederate is
certainly destined, if the war continues, to lose his
monopoly or supremacy upon the cotton-field.