ABSTRACT
UPON a population, containing half a million of cotton opera-- tives, in a career of rapid prosperity, the profits of 1860 reaching in some instances from thirty to forty per cent upon the capital engaged; and with wages also at the highest point which they had ever touched, came the news of the American war, with the probable stoppage of eighty-five per cent of the raw material of their manufacture. A few wise heads hung despondently down, or shook with fear for the fate of " the freest nation under heaven/' but the great mass of traders refused to credit a report which neither suited their opinions nor their interests. Whatever might be done amongst the despotisms of the Continent of Europe, members of the Anglo-Saxon family in North America would never fight; their fathers had expatriated themselves for the sake of freedom, religious and political; they had thrown off the yoke of the old country on account of unjust taxation, they had declared against all orders of nobility, and affirmed the equal rights of all to self-government; they might bluster and boast, and even destroy a few lives in a surface quarrel, but fight in real earnest they never would. Such was the very general feeling on this side of the Atlantic; and it was believed that even if they did fight, the South would still be very glad to sell their cotton, and that if our manufacturers went on carefully all would be well. There was a four months' supply held on this side the water at Christmas (1860), and there had been three months' imports at the usual
rate since that time, and there would be the usual twelve months' supply from other sources ; and by the time this was consumed, and the five months' stock of goods held by merchants sold, all would be right again.
