The great and sad feature of the internal condition of the country is the cotton famine, which for a year past has weighed like a nightmare upon our manufacturing districts, extending its baleful influence over four millions of our people. The calamity came upon us so suddenly that there was little time to prepare for it. It is true, our liability to such a calamity had been pointed out, in language of serious warning, by one or two of our ablest political thinkers, and foremost among these by Sir Archibald Alison. But the parties most interested, the great cotton-lords and the manufacturers generally, despised the warning, and took no measures to avert disaster. Their faith in the doctrine of demand always producing supply blinded them to their danger. It was a noble fabric of industry, truly, which they had reared up—a mighty addition to the wealth and resources of the country—a vast field of employment for the ever-increasing population of our isles. The effect was as beneficial as if several thousand square miles of productive land had been gradually added to the narrow area of the British Isles—affording remunerative employment to hundreds of thousands of our people who must otherwise have emigrated, and proportionately adding to the power of the country and the resources of the State. But any thoughtful man, as he viewed the annually increasing growth of that great industry, must have trembled for its permanence; and now that the blow has fallen, every one must recognise the improvidence exhibited by the great chiefs of that industry. “We will buy only in the cheapest market,” they said: “an efficient demand will always secure an adequate supply.” And as long as there was the least hope of the cotton-dearth being over in a year or so, they resolutely declined to take any steps to obtain new sources of supply. They had overstocked the markets with their goods, and as long as there was a prospect of their old source of supply being available again by the time those surplus stocks had run off, it seemed to them better to content themselves with working their mills only half-time, than to procure future stability for their industry by an outlay of money. That outlay, indeed, would amply repay itself in the long-run; but no one likes putting his hand in his pocket; and month after month of increasing distress passed away without the manufacturers showing any disposition to move. Recently this inaction has partially given way; the continued dearth of cotton at length left the manufacturers no alternative but to open new sources of supply, or see their own fortunes ruined. The pressure of adversity is hard to bear, and we have no desire to scrutinise too closely the conduct of the manufacturers in this most trying crisis. Yet as a mere question of fact, as a singular political souvenir, it deserves to be noted that an influential body of these free-traders _par excellence_—men who had