"But with what an enormous interest does this view of the case invest the cultivation of cotton in India. It is the only real obstacle that we can interpose to the growing feeling in favor of slavery, to the diminishing abhorrence of the slave trade in the United States. It is the only field, competition with which can, for many years to come, redress the undue stimulant which high prices are giving to slave labor in America. Nor do the facts as regard the past discourage the hope that it may be successfully used for that purpose. In 1840 the supply of cotton from India was 77,011,000 lbs.;--in 1858 it had risen to 138,253,000 lbs.: having been in the immediately preceding year no less than 250,338,000 lbs. The average importation for four years from 1840 to 1843 amounted to 83,300,000 lbs.:--the average importation for the last four years has been 178,000,000 lbs. or somewhat more than double that of the former period. In some important respects the conditions of supply from India differ very much from those which attach to and determine the supply from America. In India there is no limit to the quantity of labor. There may be said to be little or none to the quantity of land. The obstacle is of another kind; it lies almost exclusively in the want of cheap transit. Our supplies of India cotton are not even determined by the quantity produced, but by that which, when produced, can profitably be forwarded to England. It is, therefore, a question of price whether we obtain more or less. A rise in the price of _one penny_ the pound in 1857, suddenly increased the supply from 180,000,000 lbs. in 1856 to 250,000,000 lbs. in 1857. A fall in the price in 1858 again suddenly reduced it to 138,000,000 lbs. It was not that the production of cotton varied in these proportions in those years, but that at given prices it was possible to incur more cost in the transit than at others. The same high price, therefore, which at present renders a large supply possible from India, creates an unusual demand for slaves in the United States. But would not the same corrective consequence be produced if we could diminish the cost of transit in India? Every farthing a pound saved in carriage is equivalent to so much added to the price of cotton. Four-pence the pound in the Liverpool market for good India cotton, with a cost of two-pence from the spot of production, would command just as great a supply as a price of five-pence the pound if the intermediate cost were three-pence. The whole question resolves itself into one of good roads and cheap conveyance. Labor in India is infinitely more abundant than in the United States, and much cheaper; land is at least as cheap; the climate is as good;--but the bullock trains on the miserable roads of Hindostan cannot compete with the steamers and other craft on the Mississippi. No doubt we have new hopes in the district of Scinde, and in the aid of the Indus. We have new hopes in the railways which are being constructed,--not only in cheapening transit, but even more in improving the condition in which native produce will be brought to market. Whatever, therefore, be the financial sacrifice which in the first place must be made for the purpose of opening the interior of India, it should be cheerfully made, as the only means by which we can hope permanently to improve the revenues of India, to increase and cheapen the supply of the most important raw material of our own industry, and to bring in the abundant labor of the millions of our fellow-subjects in India, to redress the deficiency in the slave States of America, and thus to give the best practical check to the growing attractions of slavery and the slave trade."