Source.—Ashley’s Life of Viscount Palmerston, vol. ii., pp. 210, 211. (Richard Bentley and Son, 1874.)

Letter from Lord Palmerston to the President of the Board of Trade.

June 7, 1861.

My dear Milner Gibson.

It is wise when the weather is fine to put one’s house in wind and watertight condition against the time when foul weather may come on. The reports from our manufacturing districts are at present good; the mills are all working, and the people are in full employment. But we must expect a change towards the end of next autumn, and during the winter and the spring of next year. The civil war in America must infallibly diminish to a great degree our supply of cotton, unless, indeed, England and France should, as suggested by M. Mercier, the French Minister at Washington, compel the Northern States to let the cotton come to Europe from the South; but this would almost be tantamount to a war with the North, although not perhaps a very formidable thing for England and France combined. But even then this year’s crop must be less plentiful than that of last year. Well, then, has the Board of Trade, or has any other department of the Government, any means of procuring or of helping to procure anywhere in the wide world a subsidiary supply of cotton? As to our manufacturers themselves they will do nothing unless directed and pushed on. They are some of the most helpless and shortsighted of men. They are like the people who held out their dishes and prayed that it might rain plum-puddings. They think it is enough to open their mill-gates, and that cotton will come of its own accord. They say they have for years been looking to India as a source of supply; but their looks seem to have only the first effect of the eyes of the rattlesnake, viz., to paralyse the objects looked at, and as yet it has shown no signs of falling into their jaws. The western coast of Africa, the eastern coast of Africa, India, Australia, the Fiji Islands, Syria, and Egypt, all grow great quantities of cotton, not to mention China, and probably Japan. If active measures were taken in time to draw from these places such quantities of cotton as might be procured, some portion at least of the probable falling off of this next year might be made good, and our demand this year would make a better supply spring up for future years. I do not know whether you can do anything in this matter; but it is an important one, and deserves early attention.

Yours sincerely,
Palmerston.