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NOTE.-With reference to the period from 1801 to 1814 inclusive, it is to be observed― 1. That the quantities of sugar used in the distillation of spirits at various times during that period, when the distillation from corn was prohibited, together with the duties levied on the quantities so used, have been excluded from this statement.

2. That the destruction of the records by fire in 1814 having rendered it impracticable to obtain an accurate view of the consumption of any single year prior to that date, the annual average consumption of the whole period, 1801-1814, is exhibited as the substitute for such information.

ABSTRACT of the foregoing Statement, showing the Annual Consumption of SUGAR in the UNITED KINGDOM in its relation to the Price of the Commodity, and the Pressure of the Duty, in successive Periods, from 1801 to 1861 inclusive.

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Accounts relating to the Consumption of Sugar in the United Kingdom.Observations on the Consumption of Sugar, from 1801 to 1856.

The points principally deserving notice in the history of the sugar duties since the commencement of the present century will successively offer themselves to view on an inspection of the accompanying account, marked (A.); which exhibits the aggregate quantity of sugar annually consumed in the United Kingdom, and also the average quantity annually consumed by each individual of the population, connecting both with the fluctuating price of the commodity, and the varying rate of the impost.

The circumstance that first claims attention in the statement is this, that during the long term of years intervening between 1800 and 1844, the consumption of sugar was stationary, or rather slightly retrograde. In its absolute amount, it is true, it appears to have increased considerably during that period; but a closer examination shows that the increase was not commensurate with the augmented numbers of the people. During the fourteen years of almost uninterrupted war with which the century opened, the average quantity consumed by each person was 18 lbs. 7 oz. annually, and in the following thirty years of peace it did not exceed 17 lbs. 3 oz. That the rate of consumption should have been higher in the earlier than in the latter years must seem difficult at first to explain; but it will be remembered that the period of the war, unfavourable as it doubtless was to any healthy or regular development of the national resources, was yet a period of con

tinued lavish expenditure on the part of the Government, and of frequently renewed commercial excitement. Such a state of things has an obvious tendency to stimulate the consumption of all articles that minister to the daily wants or enjoyments of the working classes.

It may further be remarked, that although during the war the prices of commodities were generally high, and all the higher for being estimated in a depreciated currency, the market value of sugar was lower then, on the whole, than it subsequently was for some years after the restoration of peace. We may affirm, indeed, that the virtual monopoly secured to our colonies in the supply of the home market-a monopoly so burthensome afterwards to the mother country-was felt far less injuriously at a time when the population of the United Kingdom was less by ten or eleven millions than it is at present, when the power of production in the West India Islands was maintained at a high pitch by the employment of slave labour, and when the exportation of British refined sugar, though fostered by an extravagant bounty, was forcibly held in check by the political condition of the European continent.

But when the ports of the continent were thrown open, an eager demand arose for those tropical products, the use of which had for some years been virtually, and even formally, interdicted to the population of almost every country but our own. Whatever raw sugar of foreign growth had been accumulated in our bonded warehouses was now speedily withdrawn for exportation; and besides this, the sugar of our own colonies, after having undergone the process of refining, by which it became entitled to the "bounty," was shipped in large quantities to the Hanse Towns, the Baltic, Antwerp, Rotterdam, and the Mediterranean.

The bounty, it is necessary to bear in mind, was truly what its name imports, a substantial premium on the exported product of the refineries, not the bare equivalent of the duty charged on the raw material. So that, in effect, the price of the commodity to the foreign consumer was paid in part by a subvention from the British Exchequer.

Under the operation of a system which repressed competition in the supply, and purchased competition in the demand, it is not to be wondered at that the consumption of sugar in the United Kingdom fell off. We shall find, on reference to the abstract annexed to the account, that the mean price paid for sugar by the British consumer, in the five years from 1815 to 1819, exceeded the mean price of the fourteen years from 1801 to 1814 by about 58. 2d. per cwt.; and that the average quantity consumed by each individual of the population was less in the later than in the earlier period by about 2 lbs. per annum.

After 1819, however, an altered state of affairs began to manifest itself. The continent was now abundantly and cheaply supplied with the sugar of Cuba, Brazil, and other foreign territories, both in America and Asia; and though the exportation of British refined sugar was still kept up by the sheer force of the bounty, the vacuum thus caused in the home supply was filled by continually increasing importations from Mauritius and from British India. These, indeed, the former equally with the latter,-were burthened at first with a differential duty; but in 1825 this section of our tariff was partially corrected, by placing the produce of Mauritius on the same footing as the produce of the British West Indies-a measure so efficacious and so prompt in its result, that, within six years from that date, the supply from Mauritius was increased sixfold. Eventually, but not until

eleven years later, namely, in 1836, an equal privilege was accorded to the produce of our possessions in the East Indies.

Another improvement occurred in 1826, when the Legislature recognized the expediency of withdrawing some portion of the bounty allowed on the exportation of British refined sugar, and the rates were accordingly reduced in the proportion of 10 per cent. Even yet, however, the bounty operated to a considerable extent as a premium on the export; and so it continued to operate until 1838, when it was again revised and brought into equitable relation with the duty, assuming for the future the legitimate character of a mere drawback. From that time, however, it ceased almost wholly to be claimed during the next sixteen years; what external demand there was for sugar refined in this country being supplied by foreign sugar refined in bond, under a law which had been passed in 1832, and which continued in force until 1854.

While these beneficial changes were in progress, the consumption of sugar in the United Kingdom had risen somewhat above the level of extreme depression, to which it had sunk in the four or five years immediately succeeding the peace; but, during the whole quarter of a century intervening between 1819 and 1845, it was characterized by nothing like expansion or buoyancy. The quantity consumed by each individual of the population never, in any two successive years of that period, exceeded the mean of 19 lbs., and on the entire period it scarcely reached the average of 18 lbs. Moreover, in the last ten years of the term, it had been sensibly falling off. It was apparent, in short, that the price of sugar in this country was still too high in relation to the value of labour, and that a free use of the article by the working classes was only to be brought about by some decided course of legislation, throwing open fresh and abundant sources of supply.

The necessity for such a course was rendered more obvious by the diminution that had recently taken place in the supply from our West Indian colonies, a diminution which had been foreseen and accepted as a probable result of the emancipation of the negroes, but which was not the less detrimental in its actual influence on the market.

But although the general conclusion to which these considerations pointed was disputed by few, the method of reducing it to practice furnished a subject of prolonged discussion. While the principle which had hitherto been upheld, and which would have confined the consumption of the country to the produce of the British possessions, was felt to be no longer tenable; it was strenuously urged that it would be inconsistent alike with policy and with public morality, after having abolished slavery in our own colonies, at a heavy pecuniary cost to the nation, and at the risk of impairing the material prosperity of the colonies themselves, to allow the produce of slave labour to be largely introduced among us from the territories of foreign powers.

The cogency of this argument being admitted for the time, the measure which the Legislature adopted in 1844 went no further than to allow sugar, certified as the produce of free labour only, to be entered for home use at a duty of 108. per cwt. above the rate chargeable on sugar of the British possessions.

In the following year, 1845, additional efficiency was given to this enactment by another, which lowered the rates of duty both on the free-labour sugar thus newly qualified, and on the produce of the British colonies, the

reduction being about 10s. per cwt. on each. An immediate increase of the entries ensued, so strongly marked, that the rate of consumption for each individual of the population rose, within the year, from 17 lbs. to 20 lbs. This may be regarded as the commencement of a new era for the sugar duties; but though the critical point was now passed, inasmuch as the rigid system of protection for colonial interests was abandoned, the opposite system had not yet been determinately embraced. After the lapse of another year, however, the scruples which had resisted the introduction of sugar the produce of slave labour, yielded to the clearly expressed judgment of the country in the opposite sense. The prohibitory duties were now wholly swept away, and foreign sugar, of whatever origin, became admissible to entry at rates which, for the quality inferior to white clayed, ie, for the bulk of the importations, exceeded those payable on sugar of the British possessions by only 78. per cwt. But even this amount of inequality in the rates was only to continue for one year, a proviso being introduced into the schedule that in each succeeding year a portion of the differential duty should be remitted, until ultimately, in 1851, the duties on foreign and colonial produce should be equalized.

It is not necessary here to particularize the modifications which this scheme underwent in subsequent sessions of Parliament; modifications which rendered its operation more gradual, without affecting the spirit of the measure, or altering its ultimate result.

The provision for the equalization of the duties finally took effect in 1854. It then appeared, on looking back to the period preceding the Act of 1845, that in the intermediate space of ten years the price of sugar, to the British consumer, had been reduced in the proportion of fully 44 per cent., and that the rate of consumption had been exactly doubled, having risen from 17 lbs. to 34 lbs. per head.

But at this point, unfortunately, there intervened an altered condition of affairs, by which the forward course of consumption was impeded and, for a while, reversed.

A few weeks before the date previously fixed for the equalization of the duties on sugar of foreign and colonial growth, viz. in May, 1854, the war which had recently broken out with Russia rendered it necessary to make an immediate addition of 15 per cent. to the discriminative rates still existing, and prospectively to increase in a somewhat greater degree the equalized rates which were to come into operation on the 5th July following. Nor was this the farthest limit which the returning tide of taxation was to reach, under the inevitable influence of the same cause, for in April, 1855, the augmented scale of duties, which had then been in force for only nine months, was replaced by another which, in each of its divisions, was one-fourth higher than itself.

Within no long interval after the first increase of the rates of duty, the consumption began to decline. In 1854 it amounted, as we have observed, to 34 lbs. per head of the population. In 1855 it fell to 30 lbs., and in 1856 to 28 lbs. per head. But it would be wrong to ascribe this decline solely or mainly to the tax, for the price of the commodity, irrespectively of the duty, rose, as we shall find, during the same two years no less than 88. per cwt., and was higher on the average of 1856 than it had previously been in any year since 1847. This rise of price, attributable to a falling off in the importations, and especially to the diminished supplies from Cuba and Brazil, continued through a part of the year 1857; but towards

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