The Express.
London, England, 1846-12-19 00:00:00

merchants unhesitatingly buy and sell on the
faith of an experienced broker's judgment, the
Custom-house is not likely to be led into any serious
error by it. An experienced sugar-broker ascertains
with great exactness and little difficulty the qualities
of sugar samples submitted to his inspection, and the
judgments of our experienced tea-brokers are equally
prompt and certain. In the United States the value
upon which the duty is ,to be struck is the actual
selling price in the market whence the article is im-
ported, phu the freight. This method, as a general
rule, checked by the inspection of skilled brokers,
will approximate sufficiently to the real value to pre-
vent injustice and deter from fraud. But our object
is not so much to enter into controversy with our
correspondent, as to recommend his plan for the re-
duction of duties to attention as feasible in the case
of teas, supposing an ad valorem duty oat of the
question, and as worthy of immediate consideration
in the case of tobacco. The fact that there is exten-
sive smuggling in tobacco shows that the rate of
taxation which combines the greatest productiveness
to the revenue with the least pressure upon the '
trader has been exceeded. Wherever there is
smuggling, a reduction of duty is not only. advisable
in a moral but safe in a financial point of view.
These remarks are made more for the purpose of
drawing attention to our correspondent's communica-
tion than of arguing the question. We wish, how-
ever, to embrace the opportunity of deprecating the
exaggerations, into which both the advocates and
the opponents of a reduction of the tea duties
occasionally fall. The question is surely one which
can afford to be argued calmly and dispassionately.
Even those who represent tea-drinking as a great
practical moral lesson will not place ten on an equality
with bread, an indispensable necessary, the prospect of
a short supply of which excuses pan is and passion.
Nor will those who advocate the reduction of the Um
duties as a means of redressing the disturbed balance
of trade with China maintain that our dealings with that
country form as yet so large a proportion of our whole
traffic thattemporary. and transient check to it is
likely to Won a crisis. The question of the tea
duties is neither so momentous nor so urgent that it
can serve as an apology for substituting the fallacies
of passion in the room of calm truth-seeking argu-
ment. Yet, on the one side, we find Sir. JOHN
GLADSTONE asserting that the consumption of tea by
the poorer classes has not increased • and, on the
other, we hear gentlemen maintaining ihat the reduc-
tion of the tea duties will immediately make our al-
ready great consumption of that article increase two
or three fold.
Had Sir JOHN GLADSTONE, instead of ringing the
changes upon numbers and ratios, inquired among
the tea-dealers, he would have found that a great
quantity of tea is consumed by the poorer classes.
We know in some of the great manufacturing towns
extensive tea-dealers, the most important portion of
whose business is to sell tea and sugar in small
packets of one or two ounces to the females (inhabit-
ing a pretty wide range of country) employed by the
great wholesale dealers in cottons, on the days on
which they come to town. LIEDIO has shown that
theine, the peculiar principle of tea. yields, when
combined with water and oxygen, the chief consti-
tuent of bile. The use of tea, therefore, is beneficial
to the habit of body of those who live in a great
measure upon vegetable food, and this explains the
partiality of the poor, not merely to tea, but to the
superior and consequently more expensive kiuds of
tea. The dietetic action of caffeine, however, the
peculiar principle of coffee, is nearly the same as
theine : and, if we may argue from the example of
America, and the extent to which coffee is already
consumed in this country, its use is likely to interfere
materially with the increased consumption of tea.
Bold assertions, like that made by Sir JOHN
GLADSTONE, in support of the present tea duties,
are met by yet more bold assertions, on the part
of those who advocate the reduction of the tea
duties. The confidence with which these gentle- ,
men predicate what will be the result of that
measure in the markets of China, is surprising. If
the fact that we know so little of China will not
teach them modesty, surely the failure of their former
prognostications might. They are the same parties
who, when the sugar duties were under discussion,
boldly declared that large quantities of free-labour
sugar might be had from China; as yet, we have
heard of only one cargo that has reached England
from that quarter—it was found unsaleable, and re-
exported to Sydney. The truth is, that the
overweening confidence of parties trading to
China defied all warning, and glutted the
markets of that country with more cottons and
woollens than they could absorb. Of cottons alone
there were imported to China, in 1842, 23,000,000
yards; in 1843, 44,000,000; in 1844, 75,000,000; in
1843,108,000,000. Theconsequence is, that duringthe
ten months of 1846, only 63,000,000 yards have been
exported. It was asserted at the meeting on the tea
duties, held in Glasgow, on Tuesday last, that the
Chinese markets are not over supplied ; that " a large
amount of the goods of last year have actually gone
into consumption." If so, whence the felling off in
the exports ? Or how much of the goods went into
consumption through the instrumentality of the great
Hong, who failed some time ago at Shanghai, having
been in the habit of disposing of the shirtings he
bought there on credit, at half price, at Soochow,
to raise the wind to buy the teas he sold to the
English. The rash and inconsiderate manner in
which the traders to China have managed their own
affairs warrants a considerable degree of scepticism in
listening to the advice they so freely impart respect-
ing the footing on which it is desirable to place the
national intercourse with China.

These considerations will show that this matter of
the tea duties is one that " craves wary walking."

IF the present frost, which exposes the Public
Records to additional hazard from fire, last a day or
two longer, the 4,000 gallons of water in the roof of
the Record Office, at Carlton-ride (see Deputy-
Keeper's reports !maim) will be completely frozen :
and their use as a measure of precaution rendered
nugatory. Under these circumstances, should any
fire happen to the great stable itself, or the adjacent
buildings, in half-an-hour the nation would lose
three-fifths of all its records. The fire would destroy
all the title-deeds of the conveyance of land—the
" fines and recoveries" existing in perfect series from
the time of King Joint to the present day, the Pipe
rolls or great ledgers of national expenditure from
the days of King STEPHEN, and all the records of the
Queen's Bench, Common Pleas, and Exchequer. It
is opportune to give this warning to the Judges, the
Home Secretary, and the Treasury.
Remembering the promises of ministers, it might
have been expected that the public should have
learned before this the decision of the government
on the building of a PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE.
When, towards the end of the last session, a resolu-
tion was moved, affirming that the public records
were so exposed to danger " that no merchant of
ordinary prudence would keep his books of account
in the same situation ;" that the fire risks were re-
spectively estimated in all the record offices to be at
least as hazardous as those of an ordinary dwelling-
house, and in several to be doubly and trebly haz-
ardous, so hazardous, in fact, that no prudent fire-
office would insure the Carlton Ride or the White
Tower of London at less than 55. per cent.; and when
the said resolution was withdrawn at the Home
Secretary's request, on his guarantee to consider the
subject forthwith, it does not seem to us that, with
these facts before him undenied, this minister must
ere this have resolved upon the proper coarse.
It cannot now be pleaded that the erection of
the Victoria tower is the impediment, for Mr. BARRY
himself has avowed to a committee of the House of
Commons that this tower had proved to be quite insuf-
ficient for the purpose. We do not think the Treasury
would have given the answer they did to Lord LANG-
DALE"; letters in 1844, had they been fully acquainted
with Mr. BARRY'S evidence, or had remembered the
pledge hich the Treasury had given in 1839, to the prin-
ciple of having but ONE general office for the public
records. A suitable site for the Public Record Office
at the Rolls estate, in the very heart of the inns of
court, from which proceed at least nine-tenths of the
parties using the public records, has been kept vacant
ior years for the express purpose, and still is so.
Nothing is wanting but the word of the Chancellor
of the Exchequer that he will apply some 15
or 20,0001. per annum for a few years to thia
national object. Considering that no less a sum
than 10,0001. per annum is the actual cost of
administering the public records at the present
time, it seems marvellous that a proportionate
sum cannot be allowed for a suitable and safe build-
ing. We will not believe that any narrow motives of
economy can now be stopping the settlement of this
question ; and we will hope that Mr. C. WOOD will

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