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    812 The Saturday Analyst and Leader, [Se...

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    SOCIAL SCIENCE AND ITS CONGRESSES. rT^ H...

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    Mr. 13azley, Jm.P-, On Cotton Suppi/I. M...

    keep pace with the immense demand of our increasing manufactures . Unfortunately those who are most immediately concerned have not take ' ii . " up the subject in the only practical way—that of devoting capital to its production ; and when a thousand circulars were recently issued inviting co-operation in the promotion of a Company to purchase Cotton in India , many who ought to have been foremost , appear to have stayed away . The supply of Cotton , or of some equivalent raw material , has assumed an importance which few are aware of . Every one knows that within the space of a generation one of the most enormous trades which the world has ever seen has sprung up in Lancashire , giving employment to large bodies fortunes for fortunate

    of . operatives , and making colossal spinners ; but there are not many who will not be startled by the statistics which Mr . Bazley brings forward . He tells us that our last year ' s consumption of Cotton was 1 , OOO , OOO , O 0 Olbs . —an array of figures that almost bewilders our powers of enumeration , and defies our efforts at definite comprehension . Of this -prodigious mass of raw . material , America furnishes 800 , 000 , 000 lbs ., while 120 , 000 , 000 lbs . come from other foreign sources , and only 80 , 000 , 000 lbs . from British Colonies . This last fact is by no means creditable to tis , when it is remembered that the Cotton soils of India could produce more than the world ' s consumption ; when portions of Australia are fitted for its growth ; and ISatal might , with adequate encouragement , yield a very large supply .

    Directly and indirectly our Cotton trade is believed to employ four or five millions of people— -a number very much larger thaii the entire population of Svvitzerland , Portugal , or Egypt ; about equal to that of Belgium , and nearly sufficient tS fill two cities as big as London . In the various processes of this enormous trade seventy millions of capital are employed , and thus it will be seen that any material disturbance in the supply of the raw . material must occasion commercial , social , and political convulsions upon a gigantic scale ; and from such convulsions we cannot feel secure while eight-tenths of our consumption comes from a single source of supply . At any season we may find that the yield of the

    Cotton farms of America is considerably reduced . A disease may attack the Cotton shrub like that -which has devastated our potato fields , or ruined the vines , and any such action , even to a moderate extent , would involve large capitalists in ruin , and bring hundreds of thousands to the verge of starvation . We ought , also , not to forget the political caxxses that may interfere with the planters' operations . American Cotton grows under the curse of slavery ; and if the Southern States obstinately refuse to make any provision for the gradual transition towards free labour , we may rest assured that sooner or later a violent struggle will arise , and the slave system will perish in a moral and political earthquake that must for a time interfere with industrial pursuits .

    If wheat fails in Europe , America abounds with it . If the crops are short in the United States , Russia and the shores of the Danube have simple harvests . Thus mercantile exchanges oan always neutralize partial disasters , because we are not dependent upon , any single locality . Not so , however , with Cotton ; if the American crops iail we are undone , for there is no other country or combination of countries that could supply the void .

    Those who have large capital embarked in Cotton manufactures are working , as it were , over a volcano ; but from the enormous number of persons directly or indirectly concerned , the question is national rather than , local , and it is not too much to say that the stability of our institutions depends upon the meteorological and other chances which the American planter may have to meet . It is certainly not wise to hang so much upon on « hook , to trust so much in one boat , or hazard such mighty stakes upon a single throw .

    Imagine , for a moment , that four or five millions of persons were ia distress , and that the mill-owners and the operatives , finding themselves involved in common disaster , took an angry survey of the political as well as of the economical circumstances that impeded their industry . Ia the first place our present amount of taxation could not be borne , and aristocratic government or mis-government is intimately connected with the profli-Bazi

    gate extravagance of our public expenditure . Mr . . ky reminds us that the State extorts annually n sum equal to all the capital directly engaged in the Cotton , trade ; that is to say , that our yearly taxation , which treads a barren round , amounts to w sum , which more rationally expended , is sufficient to employ , clothe , and feed four or five millions of people , With such facts before us , there can be no doubt of the political and social disturbance that would be occasioned by a failure of the Cotton supply ,

    Our financial and political security demand that we should place ourselves with regard to Cotton , in as good a position as we are with respect to corn , so that , whether temporary deficiences occur in the East or in the West , our supplies may not fail . But there are other reflections which are worth the consideration of great manufacturers , like Mr . Bazley , who can take a statesmanlike view of industrial affairs . We suggest the consideration of tbe propriety of making efforts to utilize the scores of fibres which in India and other countries are now completely wasted . There is ho necessity that Cotton should be exclusively employed for a great variety of articles now composed of it . It will probably remain the cheapest raw material of which certain kinds of clothing can of textile

    be made , but other fibres are capable producing fabrics , that might in many cases advantageously take the place of cotton goods . Mr . Bazlett will agree with us that a thicklv-peopled country like England cannot have too many or too great a variety of industrial pursuits , and it would be better , instead of having another million of persons employed in the Cotton trade , to see them engaged in working up some of the fibres to which we have alluded . The plaintain , aloe , and cactus tribes are scarcely used at present for textile purposes , nor the numerous grasses of Asia and Africa . We cordially approve of the efforts to extend the growth of Cotton , as Mr . Bazley desires , but we should also like to see funds collected : and appropriated for experiments in the utilization of other fibres .

    812 The Saturday Analyst And Leader, [Se...

    812 The Saturday Analyst and Leader , [ Sett . 2 . 2 , 1860

    Social Science And Its Congresses. Rt^ H...

    SOCIAL SCIENCE AND ITS CONGRESSES . rT ^ HE season has again come round when the " Social Congress - I ioiiists" will be adding- another deposit to the mass of undigested materials they have been collecting for the last three years . [ Referring to the article " Reform , political and social , " in No . 546 of this journal , we proceed to . make some remarks ... on- this most important of all subjects . - . . Sociology is the science which teaclles what laws , institutions , customs , conventialisms , are best adapted to insure " hunian wellbeing . " But institutions , usages , conventionalisms , and laws , are the products " and outgrowths of public opinion and public feeling , of the beliefs and desires existent in the mindof the community . True it is that the former are generally always behind the latter , and that for the very reason that they stand , the one to the other , in the relation of cause and effect . Moreover , there is in general a strono- tendency in masses , as in individuals ,. to remain in the state in which they happen to be at any given time . Being up , people are loth to go to bed ; being a-bed , they find it irksome to get up ; having been accustomed to a particular sort of dress or diet , they can hardly be got to change ifc even for the better , and when health reluctant

    requires ; having contracted a habit , by long- use , they are to discontinue it , however it may prejudice them . And so with nations : we all know how long it is ere reforms that have been enounced in theory are reduced to practice . Thus , we see the tendency to continue in the beaten track , counteracts the conviction that there is a better road , and the desire to travel in the most comfortable way . But though the effect , of coursejbllpws the cause , and follows it , as indeed we sometimes see in the physical world , but slowly , there is no question of the regular sequence ; and this is the reason of the established axiom that all changes in the social organism are invariably preceded by a corresponding change in the ^ convictions and sentiments of the people . Hence it rigorously follows that sociology , defined as above , cannot bo constructed until moralogy has assumed the form of an exact science . We must be able to

    distinguish that voluntary conduct which of its very essence necessarily tends to human well-being , from that which is only indirectly harmful in consequenco of absurd beliefs and prejudices against it ; and from that which is intrinsically and unalterably pernicious , any foolish superstition in jits favour to the contrary notwithstanding ; we must be able to do this before we can say what laws , institutions , and customs are adapted by their spontaneous workings to evolve happiness-producing conduct on the part of the community , ana avert that which is of an opposite character . Hence the question arises , in what does happiness consist P Those who understand anything of scientific procedures will so © at once that a question of this sort may be answered in two ways . One is by an . empirical enumeration of the particulars in which happiness consists , or , at

    least , is supposed to consist , by the vespondont ; an enrnnoruwou which , oven supposing it possible to mnfco it complete at nny given time , must always bo imperfect , because it is meroly provisional , and doqs not take into account prospective changes ot sentiment and opinion , but ignores the new desires and beliefs that may aiwo in the future . The other answer assume ? the form ot a gonouu demonstration . Disregarding this op that detail , as n > " ««>« - matioal formula takes no cognisance of . the particular euhoj in vulgar arithmetic , comprised within the . universal law which it onouncos , it spooifios the conditions upon which ujpne well-being is realizable whorevor sentient creatures oxist , whether in t us atomic corner of the universe , or in the globes that rovolvo about , the stars too distant for recognition by- our strongest tolcecopus . To detormmo what is practically . oxpedtont in any transient . and ™ nvi * in » r . i nimRA of sofiiot \ r is within " ovow the capacity of' an idiot ,

    whose nimcfis not an utter blank . " That it is expedient when aj Borne to do as Rome cIoqh , or at least nob to do what Borne doofln t approve , with the Inquisition and its racks and stakes and auiigeon *

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 22, 1860, page 4, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_22091860/page/4/