112 
Selections. 
[yO. 3, NE-W SERIES, 
porta in the year 1S40, the then value of cotton was 63.000,000 
dollars: being £12,600,000 Sterling. 
Tobacco, 9 to 10,000,000 dollars ; being £2,000,000 Sterling. 
Rice nnder 3,000,000 dollars being £400,000 Sterling. 
Of above 2,000,000 bales of American Cotton exported in 1342-3, 
Britain took nearly 1,500,000 bales ; France below 350,000 bales ; 
other foreign countries less than 200,000 bales. Of the growth of 
that year, which was 2,378,000 bales, the American manufacturers 
consumed 325,000 bales, or nearly as much as was exported to 
France. Of Tobacco.f Great Britain and the Colonies took one- 
third in quantity, but nearly one-half in value, in the year 183-5 ; 
so that England may be said to employ three-fourths of the 
American slaves engaged in planting Cotton and half to a third 
of those who cultivate Tobacco for export. It becomes therefore, 
a national obligation on our part, to study every means by which 
those products may be obtained by fairly paid labour. 
Our supposed dependance on the " Great Staple" of America is 
thus expressed ia the Times ^ (30th Oct., 1845,) in an article from 
the Washington Union — of which the following is an extract " The 
*' English experiment in the East has signally faUed. It was made 
" under the most favourable auspices in different parts of India. 
It has succeeded in none of them. It was made under the eye 
of ten experienced planters from the cotton regions of the United 
States with the best American cotton-seed ; but it has failed ! 
*' Nature forbids any serious competition between the cotton of the 
" East Indies and that of the United States. The Southern portion 
" of our country stands unrivalled in the production of a staple 
" which constitutes the basis of the most important manufacture 
** both in Great Britain and on the continent. Britain would have 
*' attempted to make herself independent of the United States, 
*' throwing her own manufactures into Texas, upon terms that 
* "Exports of United States, produce for 1S40"— American Almanac for 1842, 
page 118-9. 
t Made op from Table of Tobacco Exports, in American A'manac lS->$. page 
125. 
