266 BEETROOT SUGAR IN FRANCE. 



been induced or have felt themselves constrained to impose, 

 either for purposes of revenue or to maintain what may be 

 called an artificial balance of commercial power between co- 

 existing vested and rival interests. 



This is a matter that will have to be deeply considered 

 by tentative English capitalists, who, jealous of the inundation 

 of French- and Belgian -made beet sugar, are now taking 

 measures to establish that branch of manufacture here. In 

 the present state of English public feeling there may be no 

 considerable ground for apprehension lest a differential charge 

 favouring colonial produce should swamp British beet sugar ; 

 but it must not be forgotten, that the distillation of spirit from 

 beet-refuse is an important item of profit wherever beetroot 

 extraction is profitably carried on. 



Our fiscal restrictions in respect of alcoholic distillation 

 are beyond anything known on the Continent. British capi- 

 talists would, then, do well to look upon their new enterprise 

 from a point of view not too exclusively saccharine, otherwise 

 they may reckon without their host, and come to grief in the 

 reckoning. 



Resuming the sketch of beetroot-sugar development in 

 France, I have now to state that in 1837 our neighbours 

 burdened the home manufacture with what they called the 

 loi d'impot it is what we should call an excise or inland- 

 revenue levy of 15 francs on every 100 kilogrammes. Omit- 

 ting consideration of the policy which dictated this charge, 

 regarding it solely as an index of prosperity to which the 

 home manufacture had arrived, the circumstance of the levy 

 is expressive, showing as it does how considerable the home 

 yield must have been to stimulate legislation in favour of 

 the colonies. The immediate effect of this legislation was to 

 suppress 66 factories, and to banish the growth of beet from 

 66 departments. The manufacture only continued to exist 

 in the north of France, where the climate is best adapted to 

 the growth of beet, the soil is favourable, and there is an 



