COMPETITION lid 



work with a will, but they little knew that they were 

 entering upon a thirty years' struggle, of which they 

 only saw a small beginning at that time. 



The Foreign Office took the matter up very willingly. 

 It was a complicated subject, but they gradually learned 

 their lesson and did their best. Some of the refiners 

 began to add diplomacy to their other labours and the 

 contest went merrily on. There were despatches and 

 counter-despatches without end, but the foreigners were 

 too clever for us. 



The refiners, however, found very. useful allies in a 

 most unexpected quarter. The French beetroot sugar 

 producers, as related in the last chapter, were under 

 stringent excise supervision and had to pay duty on 

 every ounce of their sugar. If anyone in France ought 

 to have been allowed to " get a pull " out of the duty 

 it was the beneficent agricultural industry of sugar 

 production, not the three or four millionaire sugar refiners 

 in Paris. The country manufacturers were naturally 

 jealous of the favours enjoyed in Paris which they were 

 not allowed to share, and they also saw that large 

 exports of loaf sugar to England robbed them of good 

 customers there and made them more dependent on the 

 Paris monopoly. They, therefore, threw themselves into 

 the fight with great spirit and considerable success. 

 Members of the National Assembly were enlisted on their 

 side and the abuses were well exposed by eloquent 

 speakers. 



The remedy proposed by the British refiners, and 

 backed up by their French friends, was that the refin- 

 eries should be under the same excise supervision as 

 the beetroot factories. If the refined sugar was made 

 " in bond," that is, without any duty having been paid, 

 then the portion which went for export would require 

 no payment of drawback, and that which went for 



