these two great interests is, in truth, such as to enhance the importance of both. How natural then the alarm lest those vastly extended lands from which cotton is so copiously gathered, convulsed with the dire conflict of human passions, should be made sterile by the bloody footsteps of discord; or a mistaken view of self-aggrandisement should counteract the beneficial opportunities of nature’s prolific womb, and reduce this mighty little thing by the fetters of legislation to a slavery which would prove injurious to its world-wide utility. How suddenly but thoroughly have instincts been aroused, resources calculated, regrets for past apathy and carelessness converted into practical suggestions for an improved and more independent future. Europe, Asia, and Africa, that combination of the old world, which did very well once upon a time by itself, again holds up its grey head, and in the pride of primogeniture, and encouraged with reminiscences of a glorious retrospect, comes forward to pick up the falling laurels so long enjoyed in security by the far west. The prize is open to all who have the energy to strive. So great its worth that the decrepid members of the Sultan’s dominions even are almost stimulated to action, as Egypt was, not many years since, in the same cause, with results so satisfactory.[1] Where possibility exists hope should animate with perseverance the endeavours to convert that possibility into a triumph. Let us look for a little into this cotton question; see a little what cotton is; what cotton has become; where and how it is produced; of what stupendous value and importance are its manufacturing and commercial developments, and how wide the area over which it exercises a jealous and undivided sway.
Cotton (the Gossypium herbaceum of botany) is a shrub. Its nature is tropical. In Asia, Africa, and America it grows wild. Although our chief supply of it comes from a country which numbers so few ages among the records of the world, the use of cotton is of very remote antiquity. Time was when we old-fashioned fellows of three-quarters of the world had cotton in abundance, and no South American planters were born or thought of. In Hindostan it existed in the days of Herodotus, and was even then employed as the raw material for an extensively useful manufacture made up by the natives.
Strabo, too, mentions both the shrub and the manufacture. If we feel any inclination to reckon cotton among its kindred products as their aristocracy of ancient lineage, by availing ourselves of the ingenious theories of the antiquaries, we are quite able to do so without concocting evidence for the nonce.
That respectable family, so long shut up in the ark, are said to have been, beyond all doubt, not only acquainted with the cotton-plant and the fleecy filaments contained in its pod, but likewise to have understood the valuable uses to which this wool may be applied, and enough of the mechanical arts to transform it into articles of raiment. Modern investigation seems to have proved that the old Egyptians, though well skilled in the manufacture of linen, were altogether ignorant of that of cotton. This was confined for long to the Hindoo, to whom it had been known since possibly the eighth century of the Christian era, when, according to this account, articles of dress were made of it, and starch used—as we use it now-a-days—for the uncomfortable purposes of stiffness and foppery. After this it were childish to refer to the book of Esther, where at chap. i. v. 6, the substance alluded to has been thought, or at least maintained, to be cotton. This date would be only about 519 years, B. C. Three hundred years later the Greeks are supposed, with greater plausibility, to have made use of cotton cloths which they obtained from India; so that, it appears, the favourite pursuit of Lancashire is a very old one, and the celebrity of the Indian for the beauty of her “webs of woven wind” is not by any means recent.
Pliny often speaks of cotton, and a certain Egyptian Greek—Arrian by name—renowned during the second century as a merchant and navigator, has written very descriptively about it. In those days Syrastrene or Cutch was a famous cotton manufacturing country, and in these the principality of that name cultivates the plant extensively, though the whole of its produce is exported in exchange for grain. But without indulging in the many tempting speculations suggested by diving into the ancient world for the origin of those marvels of manipulation which are ripening only in the modern, I may just observe it has been remarked that, in the earliest ages, nature and circumstances—that is, Providence—apportioned to the different countries of this earth as staples for the fabrication of garments, a specific class of material to each; to Palestine, Greece, Italy and their neighbourhood, sheeps’ wool; to all the northern nations of Europe, hemp; to Egypt, flax; to China, silk; and to India, our protegé, cotton; where the textile arts, to which, in consequence, the natives devoted themselves, so likely to rise to perfection in connection with this ductile and seducing element, rapidly achieved the admiration of all the rest. The Hindoo finger to which belongs a sensibility, moisture and softness which marvellously adapt it to the office, guided by the peculiar patient temperament of the Hindoo mind, and working in conjunction with the simple distaff of India, forms a very perfect machine for spinning fine thread, which, though of late years far excelled by the almost invisible gossamers of Paisley and Manchester, being a production from short-stapled wool such as mechanical inventions fail to reduce to the same tenuity, is a wonder unequalled of its kind.
The muslins of Dacca, and the chintzes from the coast of Coromandel—pardon me if I excite uneasy emotions in the bosoms of the fair—bear glorious testimony to the dexterity and power of this delicate instrument. Sleight of hand is so indispensable an attribute of a perfect spinner, even with the aids of the truest machinery, that but few operative workmen out of the complement engaged in a mill rise to any great excellence in the production of the high-numbered yarns,—a singular instance of- ↑ In 1821 Mehemet Ali introduced into Egypt the systematic cultivation of cotton. It is now largely consumed in the United Kingdom, and is so excellent in quality that the Sea Island cotton alone is held to surpass it.
