ONE of the chief causes of the slow growth of republican institutions in Europe, is, doubtless, the proximity of powerful aristocratic landed interests, whose system of internal oppression furnishes them with the means of external corruption, and which they have never been slow to apply to the internal affairs of any state, where the tendency is to republicanism. Unhappy Poland was distracted, and ultimately dismembered, through the influence of surrounding despots, operating upon the interests, passions, prejudices and vices of its own leaders. The circumstances of the first Republic of France, show with what unscrupulous boldness an English ministry supported and paid party-leaders, whose business it was to hurry the republicans into excesses which alienated the sympathies of the middle masses, and compelled monarchical reaction. The enormous scale on which the forgery of assignats, as proved in courts of law, was carried on by the government of England, under the immediate direction of William Pitt, for the double purpose of corrupting party-leaders in Paris, and of ruining the French finances, by destroying (through excess of supply, as well as risk of fraud) the credit of that paper which was the only resource of the revolutionary government, is a fearful instance of the machinery which corrupt governments can put in operation against the stability of those institutions which they dread, and the integrity of those countries of which they covet a portion. The position of parties in the United States, and the general circumstances of the continent in relation to Great Britain, indicate the working of similar schemes against the integrity of the Union, and the continuance of the "Model Republic." Within the last thirty years, the most extraordinary change has been wrought in the position of England in her relations to other countries; and while she has been apparently descending in the scale of natious, and seemingly becoming annually more dependant for necessaries upon the rest of the world, she has been slowly and cautiously weaving a web of diplomacy, designed to replace her at once

and forever at the head of commercial and manufacturing nations, and to confirm her in the dominion of the seas. From remote points, her combinations have been gradually developed, until the crisis is now at hand, and she hopes to make a final and successful grasp at commercial supremacy over a dismembered union of the states.

The course of affairs since the peace of 115, has been steadily to increase the importance of the raw materials, of manufactures, and of tropical productions, to the civilized nations of the temperate latitudes. The progress of science, and the inventions of genius, have exerted a constaut influence in increasing the facility with which the nations of Europe may supply themselves with industrial products, and, therefore, to diminish the amount and importance of their international trade. This tendency has, however, only served to enhance their competition for the productions of tropical climates, and of newly settled regions, of which the exports are always that rude produce necessary to supply the dense populations of the older and wealthier nations with the material for labor. Those who can best succeed in commanding these, in exchange for a small proportion of the wrought fabrics, have the best prospect of outstripping their rivals in the race for wealth and power. This became manifest to the British statesmen immediately on the settlement of Europe by the treaty of Vienna, when the prospect of continuing to England her manufacturing and commercial monopoly, by keeping Europe embroiled, was at an end. A new policy was then adopted. Since she could no longer maintain a monopoly of sale at high prices, she prepared to encounter growing competition, by laying a foundation for ample supplies of raw materials and produce from her own resources, and at the same time for cutting off, as far as practicable, the supplies drawn by other nations. The great items of demand were cotton, hemp, flax, silk, sheep's wool, and indigo, as raw materials, with coffee and sugar as tropical productions-each year becoming more necessary to her people. Of the raw materials, cotton and wool were the most important; as yet, however, the demand for the latter had not greatly exceeded the English home supply, but was evidently increasing beyond it. The colony of Australia was fixed upon as the source of future supply, and of all her schemes of aggrandizement, in that alone has England been measurably successful. The wants of cotton manufacturers were daily becoming more urgent, and with every new spindle put in operation, the dependance of England upon the United States was enhanced. The British statesmen fixed upon the East India possessions as the quarter whence abundance of cotton could be realized, in full confidence that any quantity could be there raised, of a quality equal to that of the United States. Earnest attention was therefore directed to the amelioration of the condition of the people of that region to prepare them for an extensive system of cotton culture. Simultaneously with this confident reliance upon the capabilities of India to produce cotton, she adopted the calculation that free African and East India labor, applied to her West India Islands, would produce sugar and coffee much cheaper than those articles could be raised in Brazil and Cuba by the expensive and wasteful system of slave labor, more particularly if the cost of slaves and the expense of procuring them should be enhanced by the suppression of the African trade. It followed, if her reasoning was sound, that by raising ample supplies of wool and cotton in her own possessions, and increasing the sugar and coffee productions of her West

India Islands, by substituting free labor, supplied from her own tropical and densely-peopled possessions of India, the suppression of the slavetrade would deprive her rivals, Cuba and Brazil, of labor, and that as blacks do not increase naturally, in those regions, she would soon extinguish, or at least check their competition. The conspiracy of Turnbull, the British consul at Havana, to incite a slave insurrection in Cuba, followed close upon the emancipation of British West India slaves; but it was discovered and crushed under circumstances that left no doubt of the participation of the British government in the attempted crimes.

By the example of emancipating her own slaves, and by the exercise of collateral influence, she hoped to bring about emancipation in the United States an event which would not fail to destroy the cotton culture, and thereby protect India from opposition, as well as deprive her European rivals in the manufacture of a source of supply. The emancipation of her own slaves in the West India Islands was effected by the payment of $100,000,000 as indemnity to planters-having at hand the means of crushing any attempt at insurrection, to which sudden freedom might prompt the blacks, and bring on a barbarous and bloody war of races, such as that of which St. Domingo afforded an example, she remunerated the whites, and gradually and smoothly freed the blacks. Emancipation in the United States would necessarily be a different matter. Three millions of slaves, clothed and fed by their owners, could not be paid for. In common with their masters, they are supported by the products of their own labor, in the capacity of slaves. Their release from that condition would involve at once a cessation of production; the planters' credit with factors would cease, their nominal wealth disappear, and destitution overtake the whole in common. Putting aside all consideration of the natural enmity of races, this destitution would necessarily involve scenes of robbery, outrage, and murder. If these things occur in Ireland from mere destitution, what would result from the distress of blacks and whites, fired with mutual enmity, and equally strong in numbers? At the most moderate calculation, there would be no very extensive production of cotton-the factories of New-England, as well as of Europe, would lose their supplies-American shipping lose two-thirds of its freights; while Great Britain would have ample supplies of cotton in her own colonies to employ her own ships; and her manufactories, having a monopoly of the raw material, would command the markets of the world. Such was the reward which England promised herself for the exercise of philanthropy towards the poor blacks. Unfortunately, although virtue always has its reward, it does not always come in the shape hoped for by those who practice it on speculation, and the scheme fell through-mostly in consequence of four leading, erroneous assumptions: First. The growing of cotton in India-notwithstanding that American seed, American planters, American cotton-gins and American machinists, were at great expense transferred to that country-was found to be utterly impossible. The staple deteriorated in that climate so much as to render competition with the United States from that quarter hopeless. Second. The assumption that blacks would work in a state of freedom as well or better than as slaves, was proved to be utterly groundless: they would not work at all, and her colonies were ruined. Third. The assumption that immigrants from the sugar and coffee countries of India could produce as well in the West Indies, was, upon trial, found equally fallacious, and the remnant of the misera

ble beings whom she caused to be transported from India to Jamaica, are to be sent back at great expense. Fourth. Her assumption that the African slave-trade could be suppressed, has proved as great a blunder as the other elements of her grand scheme, and the leading authorities upon that question have acknowledged in sorrow the fact, that the horrors of the trade are at this moment not only greater than ever, but that the number of blacks tha: leave Africa is larger, and annually increasing. Indeed, it might readily have been deduced from the state of affairs, that inasmuch as that the demand for coffee and sugar, the products of slave labor, is annually on the increase throughout Europe, if the supply should be diminished through the failure of the English scheme to enhance it in her own colonies, by free labor, then the demand for slaves would by so much be increased, and consequently the profits of the trade, and this has indeed been the case. All the attempts of England to suppress the slave trade, by the employment of her cruisers, and by her wordy contentions in relation to the right of search, have been more than countervailed through the demand which she herself has created for the products of slave-purchasing countries. Her blockading squadron has done, literally, nothing towards its professed object. So far from its having suppressed the traffic, or promised to suppress it, it was concluded by the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry, that, although the squadron was in the very highest state of efficiency and discipline, the trade was now conducted with

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an amount of organization, and with a degree of confidence in the success of its adventures, such as has never before been opposed to the efforts of the nations engaged in suppressing it." The mean number of captives matters very little in such a state of things as this-and the London Times remarks as follows:

"As a mere question of fact, it has been placed beyond doubt, that our cruisers do not prevent, nor even materially impede, the exportation of slaves from Africa, nor their importation into Brazil. On the contrary, it has been concurrently stated by the commodore, and one of the most intelligent captains of the squadron, that its presence did actually tend to the consolidation and settlement of the traffic, by confining it to houses of large capital and extraordinary vesources. We subjcin the following statement, taken from the Foreign Office reports and Mr. Bandinel's abstract:

"Judging from such information as we can obtain, we think the number of slaves exported from the coast in 1848, cannot have fallen short of 100,000, of which, between 6,000 and 7,000 must have been captured, as we collect, by Sir Charles Hotham's squadron. His own evidence gave nearly 30 per cent. as the proportion of captures, speaking of captured vessels only; but if this is the case, the captures must have been confined to very small, or very lightly-laden vessels; for the proportion has seldom, it will be seen, reached even as high as 10 per cent.

If any conclusive confirmation were wanted of the truth that the fluctuations of the slave-trade depended solely on the demand for slave-produce in the markets of Europe, it would be found in a table which exhibits a comparative

view of the extent of the trade at different periods, and of the prices at such periods of ordinary Havana sugar:

"Very little doubt can exist, as to the commercial character of the whole proceeding. The numbers would, doubtless, have differed had our squadron not been there, but the proportions would have remained the same, and may as well set at rest any inquiry as to the causes producing the increase of the slavetrade at one time, and the diminution at another."

When England, through the enormous rise of sugar, caused by the ruin of her colonies, was compelled to throw her ports open to foreign sugar, she gave a direct premium for the importation of slaves. That she pretended to exclude slave sugar, did not vary the result-thus the free-grown sugar of India found sale in Europe. The moment England bid higher for the sugar, it went to her instead of Europe, and by so much was the European demand for slave sugar enhanced by the acts of England. Not only did this result from the failure of her plan, but the price of sugar was greatly enhanced to the people of England, and they were finally, after paying $100,000,000 to free the slaves, $75,000,000 more in the enhanced prices of sugar, and $50,000,000 to support the slave squadron-and after an attempt to exclude slave-grown sugar from English consumption, compelled to admit it, and therefore directly to encourage the slave-trade, by purchasing its products at high prices. While the West India blacks were in a state of servitude, they raised sugar and coffee enough for English consumption, and their numbers were not kept up by the slave-trade. By emancipating them, England was compelled to buy sugar of those who supplied labor from Africa, and who were thus compelled to import more slaves to supply the English demand for sugar and coffee. While professing to stop the slave-trade, England thus induced the importation of more blacks into Brazil and Cuba, than she had herself emancipated in her own islands. Such are the losses which speculators in philanthropy sometimes sustain.

The following table, from official sources, shows the annual consumption of six articles in Great Britain, with the progressive decline in the duty: