If it is, if you could give me an account of the value of cotton goods and yarn exported from Great Britain to Calcutta for the six months commencing the 1st of July and ending the 31st of December, it would supply me with an additional argument. Mr. James's statement having already been made in the house of commons by himself does not matter. The great argument will be derived from the two returns you are making out for me. If you can lay your hands upon any old and remarkable prophecies of the great increase of the cotton trade to ensue from opening up Brazil and Cuba made by Cobden, Bright, or Milner Gibson in former years, I should like to have them. I well remember the general purport of them was that free trade in corn was almost of inferior importance to cheap sugar and opening out the boundless markets of Brazil and Cuba. Let me have the Calcutta Trade Circular again. When you have done the job you are now about I wish you would sift Du Fay's grand finance statement of the cotton trade of the last year. I have not the paper now before me, but my impression is that he has miscalculated the home consumption of cotton goods by some 100,000,000 lbs. weight in every year, besides which his average price of raw cotton differs most materially. I think you should dissect and anatomize Du Fay in the Glance. TO MR. BURN. Wimpole, January 29, 1848. I received your account of exports to the sugar-growing countries yesterday just before I left London for this place, and return you my warm thanks for it. Lord Ashburton, who is here, tells me that no sugar is cultivated about Rio Janeiro-that the sugar of Brazil is all cultivated in the neighbourhood of Pernambuco and Bahia. He is curious. to know and so am I if you have the means at hand readily (not otherwise) whether the increased exports of cottons to Brazil are exclusively to Bahia and Pernambuco, or whether Rio Janeiro, not engaged in the sugar trade, shares equally with or in part with Bahia and Pernambuco. : With regard to the exports to Calcutta, though the Calcutta commercial year commences in May, I think I will only take half the year, viz., from July to December both inclusive half a year is a more even period; besides the last half year is just the period when the injury to the Calcutta sugar trade had come into practical operation. I return on Monday morning to London, so pray continue to address my letters as heretofore. Can you tell me what proportion the value of raw cotton in each period bears to the whole value? I imagine that after deducting the value of raw cotton in the two periods from the 12th of September 1846 to the 12th of January 1848, with that from the 12th of May 1845 to the 12th of September 1846, the case will appear much stronger as regards the balance of wages, &c. lost in the period from the 12th of September 1846 to the 12th of January 1848. TO MR. BURN. February 1, 1848. Some of your quotations from Turnbull are very happy, and I shall make use of them. I propose to take this line. but as a preliminary. I want you to tell me how many men, women, and children there are in Great Britain (i. e. including Scotland) dependent for their subsistence on the cotton trade. I think according to the last census there were about 260,000 employed. Bright last year in the house of commons estimated them if I recollect right at 310,000. Assuming them to be 310,000 employed, I suppose in the cotton trade where so large a proportion of women and children are employed it would be sufficient to allow 190,000 unemployed as dependent on the 310,000 employed for their subsistence. Having assumed those dependent for their subsistence on the cotton trade to be 500,000 and the average consumption of the empire at 23 lbs. per mouth per annum, these 500,000 persons in sixteen months would eat 6,904 tons 14 cwt. of sugar, and at £10 per ton would have saved in the sixteen months £69,046 1s. 8d.; but whilst they have this much on the credit side of the account, they have on the debtor sheet their share of the profits and wages of converting that raw cotton into manufactures, on which there has been a dimi nution in the exports to the sugar-growing colonies of £1,171,142 during the same period. I wait for you to tell me what portion of this would be wages to the operatives and profits to the manufacturers. Say half, and still on the balance those dependent for subsistence on the cotton trade lose upwards of half a million by the transaction. The committee on commercial distress having been appointed, the principal reason for the summoning of the new parliament in the autumn had been satisfied, and an adjournment until a month after Christmas was in prospect. Before, however, this took place a new and interesting question arose which led to considerable discussion, and which ultimately influenced in no immaterial manner the parliamentary position of Lord George Bentinck. The city of London at the general election had sent to the house of commons, as a colleague of the first minister, a member who found a difficulty in taking one of the oaths appointed by the house to be sworn preliminarily to any member exercising his right of voting. The difficulty arose from this member being not only of the Jewish race, but unfortunately believing only in the first part of the Jewish religion. CHAPTER XXIV. THE relations that subsist between the Bedoueen race that under the name of Jews is found in every country of Europe, and the Teutonic, Sclavonian, and Celtic races which have appropriated that division of the globe, will form hereafter one of the most remarkable chapters in a philosophical history of man. The Saxon, the Sclave, and the Celt, have adopted most of the laws and many of the customs of these Arabian tribes, all their literature and all their religion. They are therefore indebted to them for much that regulates, much that charms, and much that solaces, existence. The toiling multitude rest every seventh day by virtue of a Jewish law; they are perpetually reading, "for their example," the records of Jewish history and singing the odes and elegies of Jewish poets; and they daily acknow |