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But with cotton, as with all products of com- 

 lercial value, for the supply of which there is any 

 competition, assuming natural capabilities for pro- 

 ducing them in the quantity and of the quality 

 desired, there is the equally important question 

 of cost of production to be decided, before it 

 can be expected that private persons will invest 

 their money in novel speculations, especially if 

 attended, as cotton cultivation in India appears to be, 

 with considerable risks. But as quantity depends 

 generally, on conditions already known, the deside- 

 rata to be ascertained by experiment are reduced to 

 two, quality, and cost of production. And the grand 

 question at issue is : Whose interest whose duty 

 is it, to satisfy capitalists on these points that of the 

 people of the buying or selling of the consuming 

 or producing Countries? There is little difficulty 

 in determining that this duty if duty it may be 

 called, vests in the people of the producing Country, 

 for an opposite conclusion, would lead us back to that 

 simple state of society in which each consumer (trader, 

 family, or individual) supplies his own wants. In- 

 dependent, moreover, of this view, as at the 

 present day, no civilized nation supplies all its own 

 demands, to adopt the principle that the consumer 

 should be a producer also, would neces-itate his 

 carrying on his operations in a dozen, or it might 

 be, a hundred different places, many of them under 

 foreign rule, which would be impossible. 



