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Bright, John, 1811-1889

"Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1"

The reason that it does not come is, because its
being kept back is supposed to be a way of influencing public opinion in
England and the course of the English Government in reference to the
American war. They burn the cotton that they may injure us, and they
injure us because they think that we cannot live even for a year without
their cotton; and that to get it we should send ships of war, break the
blockade, make war upon the North, and assist the slave-owners to
maintain, or to obtain, their independence.
Now, with regard to the question of American cotton, one or two extracts
will be sufficient; but I could give you a whole pamphlet of them, if it
were necessary. Mr. Mann, an eminent person in the State of Georgia,
says:--
'With the failure of the cotton, England fails. Stop her supply
of Southern slave-grown cotton, and her factories stop, her
commerce stops, the healthful normal circulation of her life-
blood stops.'
Again he says:--
'In one year from the stoppage of England's supply of Southern
slave-grown cotton, the Chartists would be in all her streets and
fields, revolution would be rampant throughout the island, and
nothing that is would exist.


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