40 



COFPEE. 



years previous to 1825, varied from seven millions and a half to 

 eight millions and a half pounds in ronnd numbers, the duty being 

 Is. per lb. on British plantation, Is. 6d. per lb. on East India, and 

 2s. 6d. per lb. on foreign. Erom the 5th of April of that year 

 those rates were each reduced to one half, and the innnediate con- 

 sequence was a steady increase of the consumption until 1831, 

 when it amounted to 23,000,000 lbs. The consumption continued, 

 without any material variation, at this rate, or to advance by very 

 slow degrees, until 1836, when the duty on East India coffee was 

 reduced to 6d, per lb. ; and this change had precisely the same 

 effect as the previous one, for the consumption again advanced to 

 upwards of 26,000,000 lbs., which was then considered, in a me- 

 morial of the London trade, to be as much as our colonies were 

 capable of producing ! We now find, however, one small island, 

 Ceylon, producing a fourth more than this amount annually. 



The Belgians, a population of 4,500,000, consume more 

 than 33,000,000 lbs. of coffee annually ; quite as much as is 

 used by the whole 35,000,000 Erench. The duty on 100 lbs. 

 of coffee in Erance is more than the common original cost — 

 the Belgian duty not a tenth part ; so that the Erench do not use 

 1 lb. of coffee per head, while the Belgians consume 7 lbs. each per 

 annum. The proportion in England is not more than 1^ lb. per 

 head to the population. The United States are the largest con- 

 sumers of coffee, as it is admitted into their ports free of duty, and 

 can therefore be sold for nearly the price per pound which the 

 British Grovermnent levies on it for revenue. The entire con- 

 sumption of the United States and British North America, calling 

 their population 23,000,000 and ours 30,000,000, exceeds ours, 

 on an estimate of population, by sixfold. Thus the average con- 

 sumption of coffee by each American, annually, is about 8|lbs., while 

 the quantity used by each person in the European States is less 

 than 11 lb. 



The changes in the sources of supply, within the last fifteen or 

 sixteen years, have been very remarkable. The British posses- 

 sions in the E.ist have taken the place which our islands of the 

 West formerly occupied. The British West Indies have fallen off 

 in their produce of coffee from 30,000,000 to 4,000,000 lbs. Ceylon 

 which, fifteen years ago, had scarcely tamed attention to coffee, 

 now exports nearly 35,000,000 lbs. San Domingo, Cuba, and the 

 Erench West India colonies are gradually giving up coffee- cultiva- 

 tion in favor of other staples ; and it is only Brazil, Java, and 

 some of the Central American Republics that are able to render 

 coffee a profitable crop. The export crop of Brazil (the greatest 

 coffee-producing country), grown in 1850, for the supply of the 

 year ending July, 1851, amounted to no less than 302,000,000 lbs., 

 of this a large quantity remained in the interior to supplj^ the de- 

 ficiency of the current year. 



It is scarcely thirty years ago that the coftee-plant was first in- 

 troduced into Bengal by two i-efugees from Manilla ; and the 

 British possessions in the East Indies now yield 42,000,000 lbs. 



