520 Mr, TJiomas Bazley. [May 30, 



prospectively and prudentially put forth. How fearful is the contem- 

 plation of a people, whose labours, directed by intelligence and right 

 principles, having supported them with abundance, and still able and 

 willing to work, being deprived of the material on which their industry 

 has been advantageously engaged? The deprivations in this great 

 industry have become lamentably severe. With less than half a supply 

 of raw material, and at the enhanced cost of a whole supply, only half 

 employment can be afforded, and consequently only half wages or less 

 can be earned. Already the working classes of the cotton trade are 

 subjected to diminished earnings of a million pounds sterling per month. 

 Generally the mills are working half-time, but many are wholly stopped 

 whilst a very few continue to give full employment, but the average 

 time now worked will be the half-time now stated ; and the consump- 

 tion of cotton is only 25,000 bags weekly instead of the 55,000 bags 

 capable of being consumed ; but in this latter quantity is included the 

 probable consumption of many new mills which have not begun to work. 

 Of the consumption of cotton at the present moment, the East Indies 

 supply 75 per cent., — 12^ per cent, is America, — and 12^ per cent, 

 other foreign kinds. Last year the East Indies were exhausted of the 

 stocks of cotton usually held there ; and it is doubtful whether the 

 million bales then received can be repeated this year. No efforts to 

 obtain cotton from new fields commensurate with the necessity are being 

 made. Past monitions have been disregarded. The Chamber of Com- 

 merce at Manchester has constantly recommended that cotton should 

 be obtained from British foreign possessions, and from every country 

 capable of supplying it. Having been a member of that Chamber for 

 more than a quarter of a century, my own attention during that time 

 has been unceasingly devoted to the urgent necessity of procuring 

 new supplies of cotton ; and in 1840, when my honourable friend, 

 Mr. J. B. Smith, the present member for Stockport, was the President 

 of the Chamber, I was so deeply impressed with the importance of 

 efforts being made to obtain superior cotton from the British East and 

 West Indies that I grew, as an incentive and example, some of the 

 most perfect and beautiful cotton ever produced, my cotton plantation 

 having been formed in the attic of one of my mills in Manchester, and 

 specimens of my efforts are now before you. In 1848 my honourable 

 friend, Mr. Bright, M.P. for Birmingham, proved by his parliamentary 

 committee the capability of the East Indies to grow and supply abun- 

 dantly most excellent cotton. With many men of experience I gave 

 evidence before that committee ; but apathy in the Government, in the 

 trade, and in the public mind, has caused to be neglected the admoni- 

 tory facts then elicited. The negro was doomed to enduring wrongs, 

 the cotton industry was left dangerously dependent upon one chief 

 source of supply for its raw material, the national resources remained 

 undeveloped, and our costly colonial system perpetuated for patronage, 

 but comparatively without profitable results. 



Essentially Great Britain possesses the monopoly of the best land 

 found in the world for the growth of cotton. With the proof that the 



