PREFACE.
   « Good wine, » the hornely old proverb says, « needs no bush, » and, in like manner, no prefatory recommen-dation is required to impress on every intelligent reader the vast importance of the facts and arguments set forth in the following memoir. Il appears before the English public with a threefold claim to notice. At the present moment so valuable a contribution to the statistics of our prospective cotton-fields, would, from whatever quarter it might come, prove welcome. It is doubly welcome as coming from that ancient seat of commerce and civilization which, after long centuries of depression, has once more reasserted and made good before the world its title to rank with the foremost states. It has, finally, present and pressing claims to notice, as the production of a most able, pains-taking, and conscientious writer, whose high officiai position under the Italian Government has placed at his command a mass of statistical data which no private individuai could possibly bave procured, but to which his logicai arrangement has miparted the due prominence and proportios.
   The Commendatore Deyincenzi, in drawing up for his not1 G0Vernment the following memoir, brougt to the task °nly the general and most varied information on ali °mtS relati*g to the Cotton question which the London