SUGAK. 



SOME of us are aware, and some of us probably are not aware, 

 that British Chancellors of the Exchequer find trouble in 

 regulating the sugar duties. Mankind and womankind are 

 getting better and better, no doubt, as the world gets older 

 and older. The time will come, everybody knows, when the 

 lion and the lamb, starting hungry from the common lair 

 upon which they have lain, will arise in the morning, shake 

 off the morning dew, and then, side by side, begin to pull 

 wisps of hay for breakfast out of the same haystack. The time 

 will come when there will be neither wars nor rumours of 

 wars ; and then, of course, there will be no war expenditure. 



It will come ; but we shall not live to see it, nor probably 

 will Mr. Lowe. Pending his life and ours, the British Chan- 

 cellor of the Exchequer will have to raise by annual tax- 

 ation a sum varying from sixty to seventy millions sterling, I 

 fear ; and until men and women can be made honest enough 

 to put themselves on conscience with the chancellor, and pay 

 him by way of direct tax the sixty or seventy millions he is hi 

 want of why, there must be such things as duties levied by 

 customs and excise. 



There are not at present so very many articles of food 

 upon which duties are leviable ; but sugar is one. Very few 

 minds that have not been specially trained and educated can 

 rise to the comprehension of very high figures ; however, no 

 one can do justice to the article of sugar without giving some 

 very tall figuring, some very large sum-totalling. Considered 

 as an article of food-merchandise, sugar only takes rank second 

 to corn ; whilst the difficulties it presents to the finance minis- 



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