That is not all these people have done. Reference has been made, in the resolution and in the speeches, to the distress which prevails in this district, and you are told, and have been told over and over again, that all this distress has arisen from the blockade of the ports of the Southern States. There is at least one great port from which in past times two millions of bales of cotton a-year have found their way to Europe--the port of New Orleans--which is blockaded; and the United States Government has proclaimed that any cotton that is sent from the interior to New Orleans for shipment, although it belongs to persons in arms against the Government, shall yet be permitted to go to Europe, and they shall receive unmolested the proceeds of the sale of that cotton. But still the cotton does not come. The reason why it does not come is, not because it would do harm to the United States Government for it to come, or that it would in any way assist the United States Government in carrying on the war. The reason that it does not come is, because its being kept back is supposed to be a way of influencing public opinion in England and the course of the English Government in reference to the American war. They burn the cotton that they may injure us, and they injure us because they think that we cannot live even for a year without their cotton; and that to get it we should send ships of war, break the blockade, make war upon the North, and assist the slave-owners to maintain, or to obtain, their independence. Now, with regard to the question of American cotton, one or two extracts will be sufficient; but I could give you a whole pamphlet of them, if it were necessary. Mr. Mann, an eminent person in the State of Georgia, says:-- 'With the failure of the cotton, England fails. Stop her supply of Southern slave-grown cotton, and her factories stop, her commerce stops, the healthful normal circulation of her life- blood stops.' Again he says:-- 'In one year from the stoppage of England's supply of Southern slave-grown cotton, the Chartists would be in all her streets and fields, revolution would be rampant throughout the island, and nothing that is would exist.' He also says, addressing an audience:-- 'Why, Sirs, British lords hold their lands, British bishops hold their revenues, Victoria holds her sceptre, by the grace of cotton, as surely as by the grace of God.' Senator Wigfall says:-- 'If we stop the supply of cotton for one week, England would be starving. Queen Victoria's crown would not stand on her head one week, if the supply of cotton was stopped; nor would her head stand on her shoulders.' Mr. Stephens, who is the Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy, says:-- 'There will be revolution in Europe, there will be starvation there; our cotton is the element that will do it.'