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he and his fellow-manufacturers within the “States” expect to have all to themselves. Wherefore should he trouble his mind about outlets for his calico “notions” in other regions? Albeit the American manufacturer has always one of his optics, like those of Captain Bunsby, gazing into the far distance, whilst the other is fixed vigilantly upon his native marts. And there is keen “speculation in those eyes that he doth glare with.” The American manufacturers promise themselves that eventually they will increase their machinery until they require half or two-thirds of all the cotton which can be grown in the Southern States, leaving the lesser remainder for all the European consumers of cotton to divide amongst them. By that time they predict that they will have got hold of the Canadian market for manufactures, whether by annexation or by commercial union does not matter, and will have excluded British cotton goods from the Dominion. South America, Central America, and the West Indies, they regard as their exclusive fields of commercial operation in the not very remote hereafter. European commerce is to be banned from the two continents of the New World, or confined to such odd articles as Americans have not begun to manufacture.

As for our European trade relations, we have freely imparted to our Continental neighbours all the secrets of our principal manufactures, without having with equal aptitude assimilated theirs; and they, on their part, have sedulously set to work to establish corresponding industries of their own. Their aim has been, in the first instance, to produce the cotton fabrics which they had procured from us, to the extent of their own needs, and afterwards strive to share with us the trade of the outer world in those products of the spindle and the loom. In the first of these objects they have already succeeded, and they are making headway with the second. French, Belgian, and German traders, who have learnt some valuable lessons from ours, are now teaching British traders this one lesson, that they are no whit less persevering and pushing than the latter, whilst their craftsmen do not rank themselves as inferior in inventiveness or deftness to those of Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Lanarkshire. Nevertheless, in the infancy and youth of their cotton manufactures, these Belgian, German, and French competitors have not depended alone upon their native intelligence and skill. They have looked to their monarchs, presidents, and legislatures to fortify them by protective imposts on cotton tissues entering their countries from abroad; and they have been promptly granted such protection by the State, nor have their countrymen who are consumers and not producers of such manufactures grudged them the advantage. The cotton manufactures of the three countries named may be considered to have attained their maturity, but the shield afforded to their weakness has not been withdrawn from their strength. The French or German maker of cotton goods might perhaps now compete with the British, in his own country’s markets at any rate, were the protective duties abolished, for his cost of production, averaging the several items, does not exceed that of the Lancashire mill-owner. But the duties assure him a substantial profit on his home sales, before British goods can enter into competition at all. So French trade in cottons goes to French manufacturers; German trade to German manufacturers: