Page:The History of Slavery and the Slave Trade.djvu/576

 stimulus, followed by a corresponding increase of products, to those countries which had had the good sense to shun her example. There has been vested, it has been estimated by them, in the production of tropical products, since 1808, in fixed capital, nearly $4,000,000,000, wholly dependent on slave-labor. In the same period, the value of their products has been estimated to have risen from about $72,000,000, annually, to nearly 220,000,000; while the whole of the fixed capital of Great Britain, vested in cultivating tropical products, both in the East and West Indies, is estimated at only about $830,000,000, and the value of the products annually at about $50,000,000. To present a still more striking view of three articles of tropical products (sugar, coffee, and cotton), the British possessions, including the East and West Indies, and Mauritius, produced in 1842, of sugar, only 3,995,771 pounds; while Cuba, Brazil, and the United States, excluding other countries having tropical possessions, produced 9,600,000 pounds; of coffee, the British possessions produced only 27,393,003 pounds, while Cuba and Brazil produced 201,590,125 pounds; and of cotton, the British possessions, including shipments to China, only 137,443,446 pounds, while the United States alone produced 790,479,275 pounds.

"The above facts and estimates have all been drawn from a British periodical of high standing and authority, and are believed to be entitled to credit.

"The vast increase of the capital and production on the part of those nations who have continued their former policy toward the negro race, compared with that of Great Britain, indicates a corresponding relative increase of the means of commerce, navigation, manufactures, wealth, and power. It is no longer a question of doubt, that the great source of wealth, prosperity, and power of more civilized nations of the temperate zone (especially Europe, where the arts have made the greatest advance), depends, in a great degree, on the exchange of their products with those of the tropical regions. So great has been the advance made in the arts, both chemical and mechanical, within the few last generations, that all the old civilized nations can, with but a small part of their labor and capital, supply their respective wants; which tends to limit within narrow bounds, the amount of the commerce between them, and forces them all to seek for markets in the tropical regions, and the more newly settled portions of the globe. Those who can best succeed in commanding those markets, have the best prospect of outstripping the others in the career of commerce, navigation, manufactures, wealth, and power.

This is seen and felt by British statesmen, and has opened their eyes to the errors which they have committed. The question now with them is, how shall it be counteracted? What has been done cannot be undone. The question is, by what means can Great Britain regain and keep a superiority in tropical cultivation, commerce, and influence? Or, shall that be abandoned, and other nations be suffered to acquire the supremacy, even to the extent of supplying British markets, to the destruction of the capital already vested in their