SUGAR: THE OUTLOOK IN THE COLONIES. 135 



Total Imports, 

 From British Colo- 

 nies (Cane), 

 From Europe 



(Beet), 



From Germany 



alone, 



1845. 



1865. 



6,000,000 cwts. 

 5,000,000 cwts. 



4,000 cwts. 



11,000,000 cwts. 

 5,000,000 cwts. 



300,000 cwts. 



30,000 cwts. 



1895. 



31,000,000 cwts. 

 3,000,000 cwts. 



23,000,000 cwts. 



I 7,000,000 cwts. 



Great Britain offers the only free market in the world. 

 The great sugar-producing countries of Europe offer boun- 

 ties on production or export, but find the funds for this by 

 taxing the home consumption. An enormous agricultural 

 and manufacturing industry is kept goino; by these at the cost 

 of an enormous national burden. This burden is fast 

 becoming unendurable, while, on the other hand, the privi- 

 leged class of bounty-fed agriculturists is becoming more 

 powerful a factor in the State. The net result for Great 

 Britain is cheap and plentiful home sugar and the collapse 

 of the sugar Colonies. 



It is obvious that all this has an important bearing on the 

 fact already alluded to, that we, in these small islands, are 

 enabled to appropriate, as we do, nearly half the European 

 consumption and nearly a quarter of the world's supply. 

 In the agitation now on foot for the salvation of the sugar 

 Colonies, the economic soundness of a protectionist policy is 

 much to the fore.^ The question is complex and many- 

 sided, but one of the best rejoinders which free traders can 

 make is a reference to the past effect of taxation upon con- 

 sumption. 



From 1800 to 1845 the British demand for sugar hardly 

 kept pace with the increase of the population. The average 

 consumption during this period was about 18 lbs. per 

 head per annum, but in 1845 it had sunk to 17 lbs. At 

 this latter date the import duty was reduced, and in four 

 years the consumption increased nearly 50 per cent. " The 



^ S/. Jatnes's Gazette. 



10 



