THE press and people of England are much exercised in devising ways and means by which Great Britain can be supplied with cotton, and give no aid nor comfort to American slavery. How they reason on this subject, and upon what agencies they rely for the extensive culture of cotton in other countries than the United States, may be matters of some interest to the readers of this journal, who are the largest and most successful cotton growers in the world. This commanding success is the natural fruit of superior intelligence; and it shall not be our fault if the Cotton Growing States fail to educate their sons so thoroughly as to keep them ever in advance of all foreign competitors, in the production of the great staple of American commerce and British manufacture. "Uncle Tom" is a clever fiction, and wields sentiment with considerable effect, as the popularity of the work abundantly proves; but in the end, it will be found utterly powerless; for science and statistics—all the sober realities of man's long experience—contradict its statements and blast its hopes.

  Of the numerous commentators on Mrs. STOWE'S Book, and present visit to England, the London News has made out the most promising prospect for the opponents of slavery as it exists in this country; and we shall therefore weigh with proper care the suggestions it makes, designed to encourage the abolitionists, and extend the growth of cotton in British India, in her West India islands, Australia, in Egypt, Central Africa, and elsewhere, to the injury of American cotton planters. That print has the following remarks:

  "Prof. STOWE agrees with all other authorities in saying that sugar and rice would not support American slavery; and that if it depended on those products it would die in a year. No British traveller in the United States can have any doubt of this. He could almost count the estates on the low-lying lands which grow rice; and he observes that, cruel as is the aspect of slavery in the sugar-growing districts, they are narrowly circumscribed—so that the United States have to import sugar largely for their own consumption. And tobacco is no great grievance. Besides that the toil is light, in comparison with that of sugar and cotton growing, the consumption of tobacco, vast as it is can never support slaves by millions. It is the cotton that is the vantage ground of slavery, so Professor STOWE tells us, and so we have often been told before; and we always like to hear it, because we think, if this be true, that we see a way out of the evil. Professor STOWE was reminded of cotton from the hour when he landed in Liverpool to that in which he addressed the citizens of Glasgow. "In this country;" said he, "is the great market for American cotton; and it is cotton which sustains American slavery. I do not say you can do without it. I wish I could do without it myself. I have a large family to clothe; I am a poor man; and I must use cotton; but I wish I could do without it. But the thing is, can we live without supporting American slavery?"

  That is a question to which thousands now feel no hesitation in answering—Yes, we can live without supporting American slavery, and without depriving ourselves of cotton either. If that were the alternative, we should not say a word; because we certainly could not wish to deprive millions of our people of the healthful, cheap and convenient clothing that our cotton manufacture affords, or the millions of the maintenance they derive from our manufacture and commerce in that article. In short, it would be nonsense to think of it, and mere cant to talk of it, as the American planters and British manufacturers know perfectly well. But we know something else which may be less familiar to Prof. STOWE than to his anti-Slavery friends in this country; that cotton may be had, whenever we exert ourselves properly to get it, from many other parts of the world than the United States. When we began seriously to see what was doing in India in the way of cotton growing, the Carolina planters grew uneasy; but when they saw what the difficulties were of bringing the produce down to the ghats—how many bullocks were lost, and how many hales were spoiled by mud and dust, they laughed. But the effect of railroads in India has yet to be tried, together with that of a good many more ameliorations which we may hope for, from our strengthening determination to obtain better government for India. Then there is Australia."

  The News proceeds to enumerate all the regions from which cotton may be expected; but signally overlooks the materials fact that voluntary agricultural labor in tropical climates has never been successful in competition with

  The hireling labor of Europe is now in a transition date; and the failure of the several attempts at revolution in 1848, arose not from the strength of a few effete dynasties, but the immaturity of the deep Labor Movement of oppressed hirelings, struggling to emancipate themselves from the thraldom of capital. That man is neither a philosopher nor a close observer of the signs of the times, who discovers nothing big with coming events in the labor unions and strikes for higher wages, in all the free States, of this great Republic. Compare the hireling labor of England with the slave labor of Georgia, and the compensation in food and other necessaries given to the operatives in both countries.

  The seeds of rebellion have already sprouted and taken root in the hireling system; disaffection is spreading in all civilized nations, and long before the relation of master and slave is abolished, the throes and painful travails of hirelings will have brought forth some new offspring, be it what it may. We live in an age of wonders. In 25 years, fifty millions of freemen may reside under our federal constitution; and in half a century one hundred millions. What they will do, or attempt, who can predict? The writer recently attended a meeting of several hundred poor seamstresses in the city of Rochester. This is a class of laborers working for such wages as ought to shame Northern philanthropists who neglect the truly needy at home and expend their sympathies and money to help slaves run away from their comfortable Southern homes to Canada.

  We might enlarge on this topic, and point out many evils in the competitive wages system, especially among friendless females in communities where men and machinery perform nearly every kind of work adapted to the industry of the weaker sex. One need not draw on his fancy or imagination to make out cases of intense suffering and protracted wrong, chargeable not to individual wickedness or fully, but to the system of compelling the extremely ignorant laborer to compete for bread in a common market with the wisest and most crafty. The improvident, stupid slave has a protector, has employment, and a comfortable subsistence. The stupid, improvident free man or woman has no protector, no employment, and a most precarious living. Among the millions brought into this country from Europe, it would be strange indeed if a full share of the helpless did not come also.

  "Uncle Tom's" without a "Cabin," a home, or remunerating employment, or even the skill or disposition to work, may be found in all old and densely populated States. To compel persons to work who are able and need its proceeds, when they refuse from a love of idleness, and yet to secure employment and good wages to all, and at all times, is an economical problem which has yet to find a practical solution. The subject is one of the deepest and most universal in its application to human wants of any that ever engaged the study of civilized man. What is needed is not the extinction of the name of slave or hireling, but the removal of the evils incident thereto. It is a waste of time to apologize for the wrongs of slavery, or master and servant in any form. Wherever they are known to exist, an effort should be made to remove them; always beginning with the wrongs at home, that the work of reform may be everywhere well done, by those who have seen and understand the evils to be remedied. Mrs. STOWE and her co-laborers turn a deaf ear to the prayers of poor, suffering seamstresses in all Northern cities, in England and Scotland, for whom philanthropic ladies might, with great propriety, do much in the way of furnishing needle work of every description and suitable employment at other branches of industry. But when ladies in either New or Old England undertake to prescribe how cotton should be cultivated, and by what kind of labor, in a distant land, they assume a false position, from which retreat or disgrace is inevitable. In the mean time, other branches of tillage than the culture of two or three staples should be fostered in the cotton growing States, that they may be less dependent on England for a market.

D. LEE