Casting our eyes back to no very distant period, and noticing the small beginnings of our early planters of cotton, the reader will pardon the introduction of a trifling anecdote. During the year 1784, only sixty years since, and therefore within the memory of many now living, an American vessel, having _eighty bales_ of cotton on board, was seized at Liverpool, on the plea that _so large_ an amount of cotton could not have been produced in the United States. The shipment in 1785 amounted to 14 bales, in 1786 to 6, in 1787 to 109, 1788 to 389, in 1789 to 842. An old Carolina planter, having gathered his crop of five acres, was so surprised and alarmed at the immense amount they yielded, which was fifteen bales, that he exclaimed "well, well--I have done with cotton--here is enough to make stockings for all the people in America!" The cotton crop of the United States for 1844 was 2,300,000 bales. The fluctuations in the foreign cotton market, within a few years past, have produced, among scientific agriculturalists and experienced planters, no little speculation upon the course which a due regard to their own interests requires them to pursue. It is not to be wondered at, that in a country so vast, so luxuriantly fertile as ours, and teeming with the most enterprising and industrious population on the face of the earth, the strict relations of supply and demand should be occasionally disturbed in some of the many abundant productions of the soil. It is always a difficult problem to solve, especially where the field is very large, and the producers many, and constantly increasing. In attempting to meet it, the first question to be answered is, does the present supply greatly overreach the present demand?