ITS VALUE. 75 



of a direct participation in slavery, and it now costs 

 millions annually to suppress it. Nevertheless, by our 

 purchases of cotton, we continue the main instruments 

 of upholding that abomination in Greorgia, where the 

 number of slaves has increased in fifty years from 29.264 

 to 253,532 ; a number evidently augmented, during the 

 past ten years, in proportion to the increased demand for 

 cotton. The maintenance of 997,796 paupers in 

 England and Wales alone cost 5,792,963 in the year 

 1849. The annual expenditure upon prison establish- 

 ments, and upon the endeavour to lessen crime, is 

 proportionately enormous. Were the sums and the 

 people comprised in the above category employed in the 

 production of native linen, pauperism, in its malignant 

 sense, would be abolished, crime diminished, and a blow 

 given to slavery such as has not yet been inflicted. The 

 great bulk of cotton grown in the United States is 

 purchased by British merchants, and it is remarkable 

 that, in proportion to their dealings, slavery abounds in 

 various provinces. Surely, then, in vain are our fleets 

 employed to exterminate that murderous practice, while 

 merchant- ships are engaged in promoting it. A wide 

 field for the advancement of every national interest and 

 for the exercise of every branch of philanthropy is thus 

 opened. By consolidating a system for the employment 

 of free labour at home, we should necessarily lessen the 

 demand for slave labour in Georgia. However alluring 

 the incentives, or powerful the arguments, for instilling 

 an inquiry into the capabilities of India to produce 

 cotton, they may be employed with ten-fold effect in 

 favour of native flax. It will then be seen that cheap 

 linen would accomplish more towards the abolition of 

 slavery in the United States, than armies and navies ever 

 can ; and that, by the employment of our own people in 

 the production of cheap linen, we put a final extinguisher 

 upon pauperism, and lay the axe a,t the root of the two 

 most inveterate evils under the sun. Whatever may be 

 the impediments to an immediate abolition of slavery, 



