Now, I am not stating the mere result of any discovery of my own, but it would be impossible to read the papers of the South, or the speeches made in the South, before, and at the time of, and after the secession, without seeing that the universal opinion there was, that the stoppage of the supply of cotton would be our instantaneous ruin, and that if they could only lay hold of it, keep it back in the country, or burn it, so that it never could be used, that then the people of Lancashire, merchants, manufacturers, and operatives in mills--everybody dependent upon this vast industry--would immediately arise and protest against the English Government abstaining for one moment from the recognition of the South, from war with the North, and from a resolution to do the utmost that we could to create a slave-holding independent republic in the South. And these very men who have been wishing to drag us into a war that would have covered us with everlasting infamy, have sent their envoys to this country, Mr. Yancey, Mr. Mann (I do not know whether or not the same Mr. Mann to whom I have been referring), and Mr. Mason, the author of the Fugitive Slave Law. These men have been in this country,--one of them I believe is here now,--envoys sent to offer friendship to the Queen of England, to be received at her Court, and to make friends with the great men in London. They come,--I have seen them under the gallery of the House of Commons; I have seen Members of the House shaking hands with them and congratulating them, if there has been some military success on their side, and receiving them as if they were here from the most honourable Government, and with the most honourable mission. Why, the thing which they have broken off from the United States to maintain, is felony by your law. They are not only slave owners, slave buyers and sellers, but that which out of Pandemonium itself was never before conceived,--they are slave breeders for the slave market; and these men have come to your country, and are to be met with at elegant tables in London, and are in fast friendship with some of your public men, and are constantly found in some of your newspaper offices; and they are here to ask Englishmen--Englishmen with a history of freedom--to join hands with their atrocious conspiracy.