TEA. 89 



taut. The merchant, shipowner, manufacturer, and all connected 

 with the trade between Great Britain and China, are in a position 

 to see the prodigious advantages that such a measure as an exten- 

 sive reduction of the impost on tea would occasion to the general 

 trade of the country ; and the public at large, who are not practi- 

 cally familiar with the subject, only require it to be brought before 

 them in a distinct point of view, when the important results of 

 such a reduction cannot fail to be apparent to them. 



Tea is not now within the reach of the poor man. A person 

 taking tea once a day, will consume about 7| Ibs. a year. 



Ibs. 



Say 500,000 persons take tea twite a day, or 15 Ibs. a year, is 7,500,000 

 Say 4,000.000 persons take tea once a day, or 7| Ibs. a year, is 30,000,000 

 Say 12,000,000 persons take tea once a week, or 1 Ib. a year, is 12,000,000 



49,500,000 



Which shows that, at present, only one person out of every sixty 

 can have tea twice a day ; one of every seven only once a day ; and 

 that out of the remaining 13,500,000 persons, only five millions 

 and a half can procure it once in the week. The exact state of the 

 case shows that only eight millions of the people of the United 

 Kingdom enjoy the use of tea, leaving the other twenty-two mil- 

 lions excluded. A Chinese will consume thirty pounds of tea in 

 the year. 



But it is said we must not, if our accumulated stocks be drank 

 off this year, expect the Chinese to meet at once so huge an in- 

 crease in the demand as to supply us with as much next year. 



Now on no point of the case is the evidence so clear as upon the 

 capacity of the Chinese to furnish, within any year, any quantity 

 we may require. The Committee of 1847, on Commercial Eelations 

 with China, state " That the demand for tea from China has been 

 progressively and rapidly rising for many years, with no other re- 

 sults than that of diminished prices :" a fact to be accounted for 

 only upon the supposition that our ordinary demand is exceedingly 

 small in proportion to the Chinese supply. Nor is it an unrea- 

 sonable inference, that if so much more than usual was to be had 

 at a less price than before, any rise of price, however trivial it might 

 be, would bring forward a much larger quantity :* a supposition 



* It is important, in considering what tea may be had from China, to consider 

 the manner of its production. It is grown over an immense district, in small 

 farms, or rather gardens, no farm producing more that 600 chests. " The tea 

 merchant goes himself, or sends his agents to all the small towns, villages, and 

 temples in the district, to purchase tea from the priests and small farmers ; the 

 large merchant, into "whose hands the tea thus comes, has to refire it and pack it 

 for the foreign market.'" (Fortune's Tea Districts.) This retiring is the only 

 additional process of manufacture for our market. Mr. Fortune elsewhere, in 

 his valuable work, giving an account of the cost of tea from the farmers, the 

 conveyance to market, and the merchant's profit, states that " the small farmer 

 and manipulator is not overpaid, but that the great profits are received by the 

 middlemen." No doubt these men do their utmost to keep the farmers in com- 

 plete ignorance of the state of the tea-market, that they may nionopolisethe ad- 

 vantages, but it is pretty certain that the news of a bold reduction of duty, and 



