[15] It may be well here to illustrate this point, by an extract from McQueen, of England, in 1844, when this highly intelligent gentleman was urging upon his government the great necessity which existed for securing to itself, as speedily as possible, the control of the labor and the products of tropical Africa. In reference to the benefits which had been derived from her West India colonies, before the suppression of the slave trade and the emancipation of the slaves had rendered them comparatively unproductive, he said: "During the fearful struggle of a quarter of a century, for her existence as a nation, against the power and resources of Europe, directed by the most intelligent but remorseless military ambition against her, the command of the productions of the torrid zone, and the advantageous commerce which that afforded, gave to Great Britain the power and the resources which enabled her to meet, to combat, and to overcome, her numerous and reckless enemies in every battle-field, whether by sea or land, throughout the world. In her the world saw realized the fabled giant of antiquity. With her hundred hands she grasped her foes in every region under heaven, and crushed them with resistless energy." In further presenting the considerations which he considered necessary to secure the adoption of the policy he was urging, Mr. McQueen referred to the difficulties which were then surrounding Great Britain, and the extent to which rival nations had surpassed her in tropical cultivation. He continued: "The increased cultivation and prosperity of foreign tropical possessions is become so great, and is advancing so rapidly the power and resources of other nations, that these are embarrassing this country, (England,) in all her commercial relations, in her pecuniary resources, and in all her political relations and negotiations." . . . . . . "Instead of supplying her own wants with tropical productions, and next nearly all Europe, as she formerly did, she had scarcely enough, of some of the most important articles, for her own consumption, while her colonies were mostly supplied with foreign slave produce." . . . . . . "In the mean time tropical productions had been increased from $75,000,000, to $300,000,000 annually. The English capital invested in tropical productions in the East and West Indies, had been, by emancipation in the latter, reduced from $750,000,000, to $650,000,000; while, since 1808, on the part of foreign nations $4,000,000,000 of fixed capital had been created in slaves and in cultivation wholly dependent upon the labor of slaves." The odds, therefore, in agricultural and commercial capital and interest, and consequently in political power and influence, arrayed against the British tropical possessions, were very fearful--six to one. This will be better understood by giving the figures on the subject. The contrast is very striking, and reveals the secret of England's untiring zeal about slavery and the slave trade.