The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1842-06-07 00:00:00

would have had that effect)—

—to raise an additional re

venue amounting to £600,000 from this source
proposition of Mr. Labouchere, on the contrary, is

throw away a revenue of something between £400,00C
and £806,000, for which of course some substitute mus'

be provided. It was urged, indeed, that Sir Robert
Peel would have a surplus available, from the amount
prodnced by his income tax ; but even supposing this
to be the case, of which we are certainly not sanguine,
still it can only fill the place of some other reductions
of the tariff which were to be effected from the same
source, and is thus no boon, in the way of conceded
taxation at least, to the consuming classes.
That this sacrifice of revenue would take place was
clearly proved by Mr. Gladstone. It was shown by
that gentleman, upon the data furnished by Mr. Labou-
chere himself, that the average duty-paid price of sugar
under the proposed new duties would be 545. 6d. per
cwt. The average price of the three years 1830, 1831,
and 1832 was 50s. 3d.—or 3s. 6d. per cwt. less. It
was fair, therefore, to take the consumption perhead
of those three years of cheapness as the standard per
head of consumption, under the system of reduced
duties and reduced price. The consumption per head
in those years was 25 lbs. per annum ; in 1840 it had
fallen to 241. Giving, therefore, an additional pound
per head, to raise the consumption to the standard of
1830 to 1832, and calculating the population by the
new census, there would be an increase of 18,656,000
lbs., or 8,328 tons,'as the probable additional consump-
tion of 1841-2. If half of this were foreign sugar, the
duty would be paid on this additional quantity to the
amount of £218,714 against £852,400 deficiency,
leaving a nett sacrifice of revenue, from the change, of
£633,700. If the increase of consumption here as-
suured were even to be doubled, there would still re-

main a nett deficit of £417,000: --
--
And what is the amount of the reduction in the cost
of sugar to the consumer to compensate for this loss of
revenue,—which, be it remembered, must be replaced
by taxation in some other shape ? Why, at the utmost,
the reduction from the present price to that which Mr.
Lahouchere calculates upon, as the future price, would
be 7s. 10d. per cwt., or less than id. per lb. Calcu-
lating, however, upon the advance which would ne-
cessarily take place in the price of foreign sugar upon
its admission into the British market, the saving to
the consumer would probably not reach three farthings
per lb., or about eighteenpence a year upon his consump-
tion. For this paltry amount we are called upon to
inflict certainly " a heavy blow," if not utterly to ruin
our sugar producing colonies, and to hold out the
strongest bonus which can be given for the perpetua-
tion of slavery throughout the world. We are called
upon to do this, too, at a time when it is becoming more
and more certain that the consumption of the British
market can be supplied by the produce of our own free
labour colonies, at prices which are steadily decreasing
from year to year. In 1840, according to statements
furnished by Sir Robert Peel, the average price of Bri-
tish plantation sugar was 498, id, per cwt,; in 1841 it