benefited such of our colonies as were able
to grow this much-coveted substance. In
eighteen hundred and fifty, three millions
sterling was paid for all the cotton we obtained
from the colonies, including India; whereas in
'sixty-three we paid six times as much to that
one country alone. Nearly twenty millions
sterling value of goods and silver (they do not
want much gold currency in India) were sent
out in exchange for (say) five hundred million
pounds of cotton. India ought to have benefited
greatly by this unexpected chance. There
is too much reason to fear, however, that the
actual cultivators, the ryots or peasant proprietors,
obtained but a very small share of the
enormously increased price for this cotton; it
was filtered among a number of dealers and
middlemen, and gave enormous profits to the
native Bombay merchants—Messrs. Booboojee,
Rumtumjee, Jamtoljee, Wacfoljee, and the rest
of them. Let the reader remember that cotton
used to be sold at a fair profit for twopence per
pound at Bombay; let him calculate what price
is denoted by twenty millions sterling for five
hundred million pounds of cotton; and then he
will see how much reason Bombay has had to
rejoice at the shot which the Southerners fired
on Fort Sumter. Provoking it is, certainly, to
be told that in the West Indies, which used
to send us a respectable quantity of cotton, the
commercial arrangements of the planters, and
the laziness of emancipated negroes, have caused
the cultivation almost to die out. In our dire
and sore distress, when we wanted cotton from
anywhere, everywhere, the West India Islands
sent us only driblets, telling little in the great
account. In the Australian colonies labour is
too high-priced to render the cotton culture
profitable, except as a partial experiment; and
somehow or other, most of the other colonies
failed in coming to the rescue. Thus it
happens that India is almost the only foreign
possession of England which has responded to our
cry for cotton during the late crisis.

Gold and Cotton—thirteen millions' worth of
the one, twenty millions' worth of the other;
these are the mighty items which the forty-six
children sent to us in one year. But there
were great doings in other commodities likewise.
The Australian colonies sent us wool to
the value of two millions in eighteen hundred
and fifty; but so rapidly did their sheep grow,
and so well were they attended to, that the
export more than trebled by the year 'sixty-three;
while that of hides and skins multiplied seven-
fold.  Go we to India; there we find that dyes,
hides, skins, opium, jute, rice, saltpetre, seeds,
silk, sugar, and wool, made up a magnificent
total of twenty-five millions sterling—not all
sent to us, certainly; for Pooh Pooh Whang
Chop is the buyer of the chief item, opium. Go
we to Ceylon; there we find coffee and cocoa-nut
oil, the two chief items, rising nearly threefold
in amount in the stated fourteen years. Go we
to Canada, and the other North American
colonies; there we find that the chief items
sent to us are timber, dried fish, potash, corn, and
flour,—treble as much in the last-named as in
the first-named year. So completely fishy is
Newfoundland, that all the chief articles of
export smell of fish in some form or other. Look
at the list:—two million cwts. of dry codfish,
three hundred thousand seals (we beg pardon
for calling a seal a fish, but he will paddle about
in the water), three thousand tons of cod-oil
(perhaps not all cod-liver), and four thousand
tons of seal oil. Go we to the West Indies;
there we find coffee, rum, sugar, molasses, and
cocoa. The three principal islands send us a
little over two millions' worth of these
commodities;  but this was not such an increase
beyond the year 'fifty as ought to have been
exhibited, or as would have been exhibited if
those islands were well managed.

The reader will not be wearied by the above
few round numbers. It really is interesting to
see what are the chief articles which our forty-
six children can sell to us, and how far they
differ from each other in this matter.

Nor will it be a waste of time to see what
sorts of things they are willing to buy from us ia
return. Clothing, and the materials for clothing,
figure in a remarkable degree. Apparel and
slops, millinery and haberdashery, hats and
bonnets, boots and shoes, silks and woollens,
linens and laces, the work of the needle and
the spindle and the loom—what would the
reader suppose our colonies took of these in
'sixty-three? Twenty-five millions sterling.
It really is one of the most astonishing things
in our commerce; for these are not merely the
raw materials of industry; they are articles on
which millions of fingers have been employed
in the old country, millions of mouths fed or
partially fed. Every throb of success or failure
in India or Australia is sensibly felt by those
who work upon textile goods in England. If
we do not all form one family, more shame to
us; for our colonies will buy of us as much
and as rapidly as we of them. And then, if
twenty-five millions are spent upon clothing,
how much upon food and drink? About
eighteen millions sterling. Not that it costs
less to fill the belly than to clothe the back;
but that the colonies can do more to grow their
own food than to grow and make the materials
for their clothing; and thus the money they
spend to buy the former from other countries is
relatively less. The colonials are either thirsty
souls, or else they think English beer and ale
paramount to all others; for they swallow these
famous beverages to an astonishing extent. Mr.
Bass, and Mr. Allsopp, and Burton-upon-Trent,
would be great sufferers if India were suddenly
swamped; she takes more than three million
gallons of ale and beer from us yearly; most of it, we
may be sure, in the form of pale ale. New South
Wales swallows two million gallons; Victoria
two million and a half; New Zealand a million;
Queensland and South Australia half a million
between them. Even supposing those colonists
not to be able to make good malt or grow good
hops, the freight of those articles from England
would of course be very much less than that of