The vital and momentous question of cotton production, manufacture, and exportation, is involved in this subject. Shall we continue to supply the markets of the world with this indispensable commodity, the raw material and the manufactured products; or shall we become importers of the greatly inferior article from the East Indies at prices largely enhanced, with the consequent destruction of our manufactures and the loss of eight millions of exports of American goods with all the prospective increase of this important branch of the national industry? The annihilation of the cotton trade in the United States would change the face of the world. It would diminish the power and importance of our country among the nations to an incredible extent; and it would seriously affect the relations of other powers among themselves. The attitude of France and England toward us, at this moment, gives but a faint indication of what we should suffer at their hands if the organization of labor at the South should be so utterly destroyed as to prevent the cultivation of the great staple which that favored region is so preëminently fitted to produce. It is the influence imparted by this production which the South has endeavored to use as its most formidable weapon, against us in this gigantic rebellion; and whatever countenance the rebels have received, or hereafter expect to receive from abroad, is the result solely of their command of this indispensable production. It is this which supplies them with arms and munitions of war at home, and which builds the piratical ships with which they prey upon our commerce on the high seas. Indeed, but for this all-powerful product of their soil and labor, stimulating them and their foreign allies with the hope of liberating the vast supplies now on hand, the war would, in all probability, have been long since determined. But motives of still wider scope and bearing instigate the unfriendly acts of England and France. It is a question with these powers, whether they shall hold the rebellious States by such obligations as shall make them a virtual dependency for their own advantage, as the record shows they attempted to do in the case of Texas in 1844; or whether these factious and ambitious fragments of the Union shall be subdued by our own Government and brought back to their true allegiance, with the effect of reinstating our envied and dreaded power, and with our virtual monopoly of cotton confirmed and consolidated. It is easy to see how dazzling is the temptation which induces England and France to play the false and dangerous part which they are so plainly acting, in this, the most critical emergency which has arisen during the whole period of our national existence. But the stake at issue, however valuable to them, is of infinitely greater importance to us.