My remarks on the cotton business of Britain were made with entire sincerity, and a single-hearted desire to promote the antislavery cause. They are sentiments which I had long entertained, and which I had taken every opportunity to express with the utmost freedom from the time of my first landing in Liverpool, the great cotton mart of England, and where, if any where, they might be supposed capable of giving offence; yet no exception was taken to them, so far as I know, till delivered in Exeter Hall. There they were heard by some with surprise, and by others with extreme displeasure. I was even called _proslavery_, and ranked with Mrs. Julia Tyler, for frankly speaking the truth, under circumstances of great temptation to ignore it.
Still I have the satisfaction of knowing that both my views and my motives were rightly understood and properly appreciated by large-hearted and clear-headed philanthropists, like the Earl of Shaftesbury and Joseph Sturge, and very fairly represented and commented upon by such religious and secular papers as the Christian Times, the British Banner, the London Daily News and Chronicle; and even the _thundering political_ Times seemed disposed, in a half-sarcastic way, to admit that I was more than half right.
But it is most satisfactory of all to know that the best of the British abolitionists are now acting, promptly and efficiently, in accordance with those views, and are determined to develop the resources of the British empire for the production of cotton by free labor. The thing is practicable, and not of very difficult accomplishment. It is furthermore absolutely essential to the success of the antislavery cause; for now the great practical leading argument for slavery is, _Without slavery you can have no cotton, and cotton you must and will have_. The latest work that I have read in defence of slavery (Uncle Tom in Paris, Baltimore, 1854) says, (pp. 56-7,) "_Of the cotton which supplies the wants of the civilized world, the south produces 86 per cent.; and without slave labor experience has shown that the cotton plant cannot be cultivated_."
How the matter is viewed by sagacious and practical minds in Britain, is clear from the following sentences, taken from the National Era:--