The ratio of increase in the cotton manufacture of Russia, for the same term of eighteen years, was therefore considerably more than fourfold. And this steady but extraordinary superiority of Russian progression took place in the face of all those prosperity years, when, from 1833 to 1838, the British cotton manufacture was stimulated, and bloated to excess, with the high prices resulting from the flash bank-paper and loan system of the United States, and the mad joint-stock banking freaks of Lancashire. The average import and consumption of raw cotton in Russia, and of yarn calculated into cotton, was at the rate, on the average of the three years cited, of about, 35,963,000 lbs. per annum; Which approximates the position of the Russian with that of the cotton manufacture of France as existing in the year 1818, when the consumption of raw cotton is officially stated at, 16,974,159 kilogrammes; And with that of the cotton manufacture of the United States in 1828, when the quantity consumed at home was stated at about, 35,359,000 lbs. It will still be insisted, doubtless, as all along it has never failed to be the cuckoo-note of unreflecting theorists, that the manufactures of Russia have flourished, and are flourishing, in spite of protection; that the only effect of protection is to repress their growth and mar their perfection. The assertion stands ready-made, and ever the stock on hand; it is a rash and blindfold speculation upon chance and futurity, at the best; a building without a corner stone; a _chateau-d'Espagne_ nowhere to be found. Where, except in the glowing fictions of Scheherezade, may the personification of such a phantom be detected? History, whether ancient or modern, may be ransacked in vain for one footprint of the realised existence and miraculous economical prodigies worked upon the absolute free-trade principle, in the spontaneous creation, the progress unrivalled, the prosperity Pactolean, of ingenious manufactures. The El-Dorado region has yet to be discovered; will Cobden, like another Columbus in search of new worlds, adventure upon the desperate enterprise, and furnish the writer of romance with apt materials for the frights and freaks of another "phantom ship" on the wide ocean? If so inclined, indeed, we may commend him to an undertaking now, at this present writing, in actual progress, as we learn from assured sources and high quarters, in Paris. A goodly ship of substantial proportions is now preparing in a French port, richly freighted for an interesting voyage with the products of French industry, with destination for the great sea-river of the Amazons, for navigating its thousands of miles of unploughed course, and exploring those realms untold of, those interminable wastes recorded, and those numberless nations as yet unknown, if existing, which coast the vast expanse of its waters to the utmost limits of Brazil, and the very confines of Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia. The King of the French is