118 SUGAR 



carried out. However, it was signed and ratified in 

 1864, and the only result, so far as this country was 

 concerned, was a constantly increasing supply of loaf 

 sugar from France and Holland. In five or six years 

 the competition became serious. Many of the London 

 loaf sugar refiners retired from business. The rest 

 began to look into the matter and soon found out the 

 cause of this alarming invasion. According to the 

 terms of the Convention the duties on raw sugar were to 

 be levied according to the colour of the sugar. There 

 were three or four classes, paying different rates of duty, 

 the brownest sugar in the lowest class, and so on up to 

 the finest in the first class. The system worked quite 

 fairly in this country, where the refiners used great 

 varieties of raw sugar from all parts of the world. But 

 in Paris the refiners were beginning to use the raw beet- 

 root sugar, the quality of which was not accurately 

 indicated by the colour. They could get sugar classed 

 as yielding only eighty per cent, of refined which in 

 reality yielded ninety per cent. In France the duty 

 was very high and, therefore, the profit on ten per cent, 

 of sugar escaping the duty was very large. The full 

 drawback was allowed on exportation and, therefore, the 

 refiner naturally got the full duty from the home con- 

 sumer. He, therefore, got a profit of ten per cent, of 

 the duty on the whole of his production. After the 

 Franco-German War, the duty was greatly increased 

 and so was the refiner's profit. 



In 1872 our markets were, consequently, flooded with 

 loaf sugar from Paris. A general meeting of British 

 refiners, at which every firm in the kingdom was repre- 

 sented, was held in London, and a Committee was 

 appointed to deal with the subject and induce the 

 Government to obtain a rectification of this gross abuse 

 of the terms of the Convention. The Committee set to 



