Excerpt from The Home and Foreign Review, 1863, Vol. 2

Whatever, therefore, may be the immediate or remote issue of the present struggle in the United States, there can be no question that, if the cotton manufacture of Great Britain is to be' sustained in, or, more correctly speaking, re stored to, the position it has hitherto occupied, the first and most pressing need is the discovery of new sources from which to obtain supplies of raw material. Whether we shall ever again have American cotton in the same abundance and at the same price as we had up to last year, is at best uncertain; and even if our doubts on this point should turn out to be nu founded, experience has shown us that even the most certain channel Of import may be stopped up for a time. If it is to rest wholly with the Southern States of America to determine whether the mills of Lancashire are to work or to remain idle, it is much to be desired that cotton should cease to be the preponderating element in the national industry, and con sequently the disturbing element in the national prosperity, which we have been accustomed to see it. Even the immense advantage of cheap calico may be too dearly purchased at the cost of an occasional famine. We can hardly regard the mag nitude of our cotton trade as a reasonable ground for self-con gratulation, unless it can be placed on a footing which may enable us to contemplate even an American war with some approach to equanimity. It must be admitted, however, that the selection of new cotton soils is not quite so simple a mat ter as some persons seem to think. It is easy, no doubt, to draw a line along the 40th parallel Of North latitude, and another along the 3oth parallel of South latitude, and call the intermediate space the cotton zone but after all, when we have ascertained that cotton has at some time or other been grown at various places within those limits, we have not ad vanced very far. The requirements of the plant seem to be neither few nor simple; but our present knowledge of what they amount to is unfortunately scanty. While the art of cotton cultivation under favourable circumstances has attained a very high degree of perfection, the scientific principles on which it is based have been but little investigated, and consequently we are unable to predict with any certainty the' success or failure of new experiments.

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