Considerable quantities of cloth, woven in looms by the natives, [of Abbeokuta] are exported. Some of these cloths were very fine, but they were generally coarse, weighing two or three times as much as our cotton. The export of cotton had been doubled every year. In 1859 about 6,000 bales were exported. In 1860 about 11,000 bales, weighing 112 pounds each. Every one culti vates a little cotton. This is about ten times as much as was exported from South Carolina in 1792."

Of the cheapness of African cotton Dr. LIVINGSTONE says:

The cotton was brought to the market for sale, and I bought a pound for a penny, (two cents.) This was the price demanded, and probably double what they ask from each other. We saw the cotton growing luxuriantly all around the market-places from seeds dropped accidentally. It is seen also about the native huts, and, so far as I could learn, it was the American cotton, so influ enced by climate as to be perennial.

An export duty of three fourths of a cent per pound on southern cotton will compel the South to sell it that much cheaper, in order to compete successfully with Africa and India, whenever the resources of those countries become developed, which will soon be the case; and it will as effectually operate to their advantage as if a discriminating duty were laid by the British Parliament. Take, in connection with this, the cheapness with which the article is produced within the tropics, and the consequences can easily be predicted.

A large additional expenditure will be ever required by the South to prevent and repress slave insurrections. A presentiment that such events, in enlarged dimensions, are drawing fearfully near, has already sent a thrill through society, and men and women retire to rest at night haunted by terrors to which we in the north are strangers, and of which we can form no conception.

The southern people have ceased to ignore the fact that their negroes are fully aware that they are the cause of the great struggle now going on, and their indistinct idea of the nature of the contest and their relation to it only makes them the more dangerous. Scarcely a week has passed for half a year without some report of an insurrectionary movement among the slaves. To counteract this a special police force will be required, and millions of dollars annually will be

necessary to equip and sustain it, that it may be efficient in a sudden emergency.

But no calculations based upon a peace policy exclusively are sufficient. However much we might wish it otherwise in the present state of society, the probability of hostilities must be taken into consideration, and it will not be difficult to conceive the inefficiency of the confederacy for a contest of any kind, and particularly a protracted one, with even a third rate power. Two of the states, in their individual capacity, have repudiated the most solemn obligations, and the others are deeply in debt.

The numerous expedients to raise this comparative trifle, and the various subterfuges to cover the difficulties, are amusing to the North. The very pledges offered and the earnestness of the promises of redemption illustrate the urgency of the case, and fully betray the inevitable certainty of southern inability to furnish the sinews for any protracted contest.

One phase of the subject yet remains, and we have left it to the last because of its peculiar and overshadowing importance. It is hardly necessary to add that it is the ultimate conflict for dominion which must ensue between the two races in the new confederacy in the natural course of events, and which cannot be long deferred.

There are within the limits of the United States, according to the last census, 3,999,351 slaves, of whom 2,350,607 are in the cotton states. The tobacco fields of Virginia and the border, not included within the latitude of cotton culture, are now so sterile that compulsory labor is unprofitable, and the high price of negroes induces heavy shipments to the southward, by which it has been hoped by some to ultimately emancipate those states; but there is no reason why (unless some outside pressure is introduced, which would be the case in the event of a dissolution) this species of commerce should be an exception to the general law of supply and demand; and, indeed, figures show that, with the exception of Delaware and Maryland, the slaves have actually increased in numbers notwithstanding the constant drain. The increase in the white population, however, is much greater, proportionally, than the black, and the consequence is, that the disparity between the dominant and servile races is becoming greater each year.

But a different law is operating in the cotton states. They are receiving constant accessions to their number from abroad, which, added to the natural increase, are introducing a fearful odds in favor of the slaves, which must, without the protection of the United States, make itself felt. True, the Southern planters are anxious for more negroes, while they tremble for their own safety at the hands of those they already possess; but they are not the first people who have committed national suicide. The population of the seceding states, free and slave, since 1790, is as follows:

From a cursory glance at these figures it would appear that the two races have kept nearly even during seventy years; but an analysis will show that, in general, the negroes are rapidly outstripping the dominant race, and that the reverse is only the case in particular localities, and where certain influences, altogether temporary in their operations, have had

control.

The actual gain of the white population on the black during the ten years from 1850 to 1860 was but a trifle over 20,000, so that the per cent. has been nearly the same in both; but it must be remembered that in the state of Texas and the city of New Orleans the augmentation of the white population amounted to 316,356, while that of the negro was but 125,398; so that, outside of these localities, the servile increased 191,042 more than the dominant class; and the same causes which operated in the older states must soon act with equal force upon Texas, while New Orleans, with secession, must cease to grow.

Slave population cannot be removed to a new country easily, nor is compulsory labor profitable in a country until at least partially settled. Hence all of the new states in the cotton range have been first occupied by free inhabitants; the

whites have been the pioneers, but the negroes have followed quickly and rapidly, and driven the original inhabitants further into the wilderness. All of the present slave states, when new, showed a preponderance of the free over the slave population. In South Carolina the slaves did not exceed the freemen till 1820; in Mississippi not till 1840; in Louisiana the blacks have preponderated since its admission into the Union, and they would now have constituted two thirds of the population had not the city of New Orleans kept up the balIn the other seceded states, Texas excepted, the ratio of servile increase is infinitely greater than that of the whites, and as soon as a supply of negroes can be obtained, the same will be the case in that state. No city can grow faster than the country which supports it, and hence New Orleans can no longer keep up the equilibrium in Louisiana, and within the next ten years the negroes will, under ordinary circumstances, outnumber the whites; but in case of a dissolution of the Union and the establishment of a Cotton Confederacy the consummation will be greatly hastened.

ance.

The remaining states are not adapted to slave labor, and negroes, except for exportation, are unprofitable. Assured that their lot was cast with the North, and feeling themselves emancipated from the gulf tier, the border states would soon export all their negroes southward. The outside pressure would at once overcome the usual order of supply and demand, and cause the exporting states not to sell their surplus only, but the original stock. Thus would 1,650,000 slaves be precipitated upon the Southern confederacy in an incredibly short period, and this new accession of laborers would be eagerly welcomed. In the mean time the new regimen would be productive of its natural fruits in another respect: the free population would emigrate northward, and the egress would be sufficient to diminish the number of whites; so that within twenty years we should see at least 5,000,000 of slaves to less than 3,000,000 of freemen, with the disparity constantly and rapidly increasing.

ART. VIII.-DISTINCTION BETWEEN AUTOMATIC EXCELLENCE AND MORAL DESERT.

AN automaton is a machine, constructed sometimes in the human form, whose parts, by force of interior springs, are made to operate apparently like a human system, with self-motion. The movement of the parts is necessitatively caused to take place, in precise proportion and in the direction of the forces applied. When the whole is artistically framed, we admire the beauty, the ingenuity, and perhaps the imitation—that is, the automatic excellence. But we attribute not to its action or its being the slightest intrinsic quality of moral merit or demerit. The highest order of mechanical or automatic excellence is found in a watch. So numerous and nice are its parts, so exquisitely adjusted are its forces, and so beautiful is its aspect to the eye, that we gaze upon it with admiration. And then, in the pointing of its hand to the figure according to the true time, we behold one of the most wonderful adjustments of mechanism to the demands of mind. With but slight fancy we attribute to it the qualities of truth and reliability, or of falsehood and fickleness. We wish it gently handled according to its excellent nature. And yet, literally and coolly, we attribute only automatic excellence; and we are utterly unable to see in it the slightest intrinsic trace of moral merit or demerit. We are unable to see in it guilt or good desert; we are, by the very nature of things, compelled to deny of it the possibility of penalty or reward.

Should the question be asked why, in a thing which is so noble and so pleasing to æsthetical sense, all moral merit must be denied, the answer might be, because it has no consciousness, and so cannot be made happy by reward or miserable by penalty. That this is an insufficient answer may be made evident by an additional supposition. Imagine the automaton endowed with sensibility in every particle of its substance; and that it is consciously impressed by every contact, and every force applied, and feels every movement it is made to undergo. Yet it is still an automaton, being moved solely in the proportion and in the direction of the forces applied. Its every