518 Mr, Thomas Bazley, [May 30, 



the cotton trade and the development of new mechanical powers, have 

 enabled the people of this country to sustain a system of taxation which, 

 without that trade and those treasures, could not have been borne, and 

 have supported a national expenditure alike extravagant and injurious. 

 The state, therefore, has participated in the contributions of all who 

 have promoted and sustained this industrial fabric. 



The capitalists of this trade have now two hundred million pounds 

 sterling invested in it, in fixed and floating property; and the people 

 directly and indirectly employed in it being now five millions, we arrive 

 at the important deduction that not only does the national exchequer 

 derive great benefit from it, but we have capitalists and labourers sup- 

 ported by it as numerous as are the people of several European king- 

 doms of the present time. Indifferent spectators of the abundance 

 which has happily prevailed in this country since the introduction of 

 the liberal commercial policy which is now established, rarely reflect 

 upon the obligations this vast industry has conferred in aid of the ele- 

 ments of social comfort. Of late years the exports in cotton manufac- 

 tures have been about fifty millions sterling per annum, or about one- 

 third of the gross exports of the United Kingdom. Well tiien, as 

 cotton exports constitute one-third of the whole, it becomes evident that 

 cotton buys one-third of the imports ; hence, as gold, silver, gems, 

 coffee, tea, sugar, tobacco, wine, oil, and the fruits of sunny climes, as 

 well as corn and other food brought hither, are foreign products largely 

 imported into the United Kingdom, we must claim the merit for the 

 cotton trade of having bought and paid for one-third of these exotic 

 and foreign supplies. In 1860, the last year of active and full employ- 

 ment for the whole of the cotton trade, its manufactured products 

 exceeded eighty millions sterling in value, something more than fifty of 

 which were exported, leaving about thirty millions as the value of the 

 home consumption of cotton manufactures ; but as this latter sum will 

 about equal the cost of the raw cotton imported, the beneficial interest 

 of the country in the cotton industry will be represented by its export 

 trade of upwards of fifty millions sterling. That so extensive and 

 prosperous an industry should have been founded upon the supply of 

 a foreign product, is not the least wonderful fact of its history ; but 

 that cotton should have been almost exclusively, as it has been, ob- 

 tained from almost adverse sources, is a great reproach to the British 

 nation. 



Of the 2,523,000 bags of cotton consumed in this country in the 

 year 1860, 85 per cent, consisted of the growth of the United States, 

 8 per cent, of the growth of Egypt, Brazil, and other foreign districts ; 

 whilst of cotton from the British East and West Indies the consumption 

 was only seven per cent. ! In consequence of the convulsion in the 

 States of America, the consumption of cotton in Great Britain, in 

 1861, resulting from its contracted supply and the loss of the American 

 markets for its manufactured products, diminished 10 per cent. ; and 

 whilst of American and other foreign cotton the consumption became 

 only 85 per cent, against 93 per cent, in the previous year, the con- 



