88 



TEA, 



England ; there are comparatively few people who do not, on com- 

 pany occasions, make their tea stronger than for ordinary use, and 

 the general economy in the use of tea forms an exception to almost 

 every other article of consumption. As to the working classes in 

 the manufacturing districts, Mr. Bayley, President of the I\Ian- 

 chester Chamber of Commerce, himself a very extensive manu- 

 facturer, and therefore well qualified to speak to the fact, says : — 

 " The common calculation of two ounces per head per week I 

 should think is very much in excess of what the working classes 

 consume. Domestic servants, I believe, have that quantity allowed 

 them, but I should say that the working classes do not consume 

 one quarter of that." And yet it is these classes who are the 

 great consumers of everything cheap enough to be within their 

 reach. It is this consumption that, under better earnings, has 

 sustained the steady increase of nearly two million pounds of tea 

 per annum for the last eight years, and still there is such ample 

 room for increase that domestic servants are allowed at least four 

 times as much per head as those working people who value, more 

 than any other class, the cheerful refreshingness of tea, but who, 

 stinted in its use by the exorbitant duty, are tempted and almost 

 driven to the use, instead, of degrading drinks. 



And if the general consumption of the population should rise to 

 even half servants' allowance, or one ounce per head per week, the 

 consumption of tea would reach 97,500,000 lbs. per annum. And 

 as to what might be used if the taste for it had free scope, some 

 idea may be formed from the fact that the consumption of such 

 people as have found their way from these countries, where the 

 consmnption is 1 lb. 9 ozs, per head, to Australia, has there risen 

 to 7 lbs. per head, at which rate the consumption of the United 

 Kingdom would be about 210,000,000 lbs. per annum, and which, 

 even at a 6d. dut}', would produce five millions and a half. There 

 is nothing in the air of Australia to give any especial impulse to 

 tea drinking : on the contrary ; in this comparative!}^ cold, damp 

 climate, people would naturally use a hot beverage more largely 

 than in the dry warm climate of Australia ; and, after all, great as 

 the Australian consumption seems, it is scarcely more than a 

 quarter of an ounce per head per week above the allowance to 

 English domestic servants. 



The consumption of tea, notwithstanding the dicta of Mr. Mont- 

 gomery Martin, is destined to a prodigious increase, l^or is it 

 solely to an increase in the consumption of tea, that we must look 

 to prevent any deficiency in the revenue, as there is no doubt that 

 a reduction in the price of the article would lead to a prodigious 

 increase in the quantity of sugar consumed, especially by the lower 

 classes, who seldom take the one without the other. 



It is not, however, merely that they would buy sugar in propor- 

 tion to the quantity of tea that they consume ; the cncumstance 

 of a smaller sum being requisite for their weekly stock of tea, 

 would enable them to spend a larger amount in other articles, 

 among which sugar would, undoubtedly, be one of the most impor- 



