March 2 , 1891 .] 
THE TROPIC At. AQWIt50LTl3RlST. 
655 
A MINCING LANE SALE ROOM. 
The Baihj Graphic gives an engraving entitled 
The Tea Trade : Business brisk at Mincing Lane 
Bale R loois yesterday: 
“ Uapel” is in the box. A sample of “ the precious 
stuff” appears on high, and in the foreground is 
a separate engraving of 
Mr. J: Hillyard the dealer who bought the famous^ 
sample of Golden Tip. 
The letterpress is as follows: — 
There is an old story afloat of a Stock Exchange 
plunger ” who, finding things dull in Capel Court, 
and hearing of big operations in Minoiog Line, got a 
“tip” in pepper. Visiting i he sale rooms and inspect- 
ing the samples, he is said to have given an order 
for “ 1,000 tons” of his selection. The remarks of the 
broker are not recorded. Though dealings are, it need 
hardly be said, not quite on this colossal sc ile, there 
is plenty of excitement to be had in the various pro- 
duce markets which centre in the Commercial Sale 
Rooms. The sale of a consignment of tea last week at 
the astonishing price of 107s. per ponnd has attracted 
a good deal of attention to these markets, and revealed 
interesting possibilities of business and profits of which 
little is generally known. 
Miuoing Lane is not as exclusive as the Stock Ex- 
change, and the general public are admitted to the 
gale rooms if accompanied by a member. O i the ground 
floor is a large hall with a few o rcular seats surround- 
ing the iron columns of the building. Boards on the 
walls for quotations and telegrams complete the fur- 
nishing, and at one end of the room at a lower 
level is a spacious refreshment room and bar. Tea 
seems the favourite beverage in the afternoon, as befits 
the locality. 
The sale rooms, of which there are several, with 
distinctive nnmbers, are on the upper floor. Bach is 
flttei with a rostrum, an 1 the desks and seats ranged 
in a semi-circle and sloping upwards afford an unin- 
terrupted view for all members presented. G italogues 
are printed for each sale, but the samples which have 
been offered for inspection and tasting — in the case 
of tea — previously are not shown at the time of deal- 
ing. The noise and excitement during the bidding 
far exceed the ordinary notions of sslas such as are 
gleaned from a visit to Ohristie’s or other auction rooms 
A strong dash of the betting ring seem to be here 
infused, and the eagerness of the bids is accounted 
for by the large amounts at stake. The presiding 
genius in our sketch is Mr. Capel, of Messrs. Arthur 
Oapel and Oo., known as the Father of the Tea Trade, 
and among the other members several of the leading 
habitues of the rooms will be recognised. 
With reference to the special consignment of tea 
which has created so much interest, we learn that it 
was comprised in boxes of 5 lb. each consigned to this 
market from the Gallebodde Estate, Oeylon. Great 
care had been expended in its production, and the 
price at which it was knocked down yielded, it ap- 
pears, a profit to the purchaser, who succeeded in re- 
selling it iu the course of the day £5 lOs per pound. 
It is calculated that this represents a cost to the 
oousumar of Is 7d par oup, which would not be an 
out-of-the-way price for many descriptions of wine. 
CEYLON TEA AT llOs. 
Tea at one hundred and ten shillings a pound ! It 
appears that on Tuesday last a oousignment of Oeylon 
tea of superb quality was put up for sale in the City of 
London, which experts pronounced to be the finest 
article of the kind ever offered under the hammer. 
The competition for this unique specimen was so keen 
that the greatest excitement was occ isioued by it, and 
the lot was at last knocked down at eighty-seven shillings 
per pound — a figure which during the present century 
had never been approached in the annals of the tea 
trade in this or any other country. A letter which 
appeared yesterd.ay from Messrs. Whitworth, Hillyard, 
and Wade states, however that they wore the pur- 
chasers at auction of this marvellous consignment, for 
which they gave eighty-seven shillings a pound, and 
that they have since resold it at one hundred and ten 
shillings — at which figure its cost to the consumer 
would be about one shilling and sevenpence a cup. 
Untiring care and attention must undoubtedly have 
been bestowed on its growth and preparation in the 
Gallebodde district of Ceylon, a- the leaves are of the 
brightest goldsii colour, almost resembling small lance- 
shaped pieces of the precious metal. We wonder what 
Dr. Johnson would have thought of serious business 
men who, at the end of the nineteenth century, would 
consent to purchase at the fancy price of five 
pounds ten shillings per pound that leaf which 
when infused with hot water he loved so well to drink I 
There is nothing more astonishing than the rapid 
growth iu the consumption of tea by the population 
of these islands. In 1840, for instance, the tea imported 
into this country amounted to thirty-eight million 
pounds, while thirty years later it it had grown to 
one hundred and forty-one millions, and last year it 
reached nearly one hundred and ninety millions. 
While our lively neighbours across the Channel and 
our kinsfolk on the other side of the Atlantic clamour 
for coffee as the only non-alcoholic beverage which i» 
worth drinking, and denounce tea as “ oat-lap ” fit 
only for invalids, the teapot becomes annually more 
and more of a British institution. 
It was one of the best and most sagacious provisions 
made by ftlr. Disraeli in his unfortunate Budget of 
1852, which brought Lord Derby’s first Administration 
to a disastrous close, that he suggested a large 
redaction in the tea duty. On accepting office as 
Ohancellor of the Exchequer Mr. Disraeli found the 
tea duty at two shillings and twopence farthing iu 
the pound, which he proposed to reduce to one shilling 
and tenpenoe. Upon succeeding to the Exchequer 
Mr. Gladstone accepted his predecessor’s proposal, 
remarking in 1853 that he would have gladly 
reduced the duty by a shilling but for the 
condition of the Chinese Empire, which was not 
as favourable to a large extension of supply, as he 
could have wished. “ We cannot,” remarked Mr. 
Gladstone, “ entertain sanguine expectations that any 
very large additions to the quantity of Chinese tea 
available for the wants of this market will be forth- 
coming in the next twelve months; but we hope that 
in a couple of years from now an adequate increase of 
supply may be relied on from the Celestial Empire.” In 
a subsequent Budget Mr. Gladstone reduced the duty 
from one-and-tenpence to one-aud-fivepenoe in the 
pound, but it was not until 1863 that, holding up in his 
left hand a small packet of tea marked one shilling and 
fivepenoe, and in his right hand a much larger packet 
marked one shilling, Mr. Gladstone showed in his 
Budget of that year how much the redaction of the 
duty from one shilling and fivepenoe to one shilling in 
the ponnd would redound to the advantage of the 
purchaser. Two years later the shdliug duty was fur- 
ther reduoed to sixpence, and so remained until in his 
last Budget Mr. Gosoheu made n farther concession of 
twopence in the ponnd. The result is that the con- 
sumption of tea in the United Kingdom has kept pace 
steadily with the successiva diminution in the duty 
which, catering for the poorest classes of the 
population, it is the ambition and policy of each 
successive Ohancellor of the Exchequer to oon- 
tinue. Every one is aware that excellent tea is 
now to be obtained at two shillings, or even at 
one and sixpence per pound, and it will startle the 
humble consumer to read that more than one hundred 
shillings per pound have just been paid for a consign- 
ment from Oeylon. In his recent speech at Hawarden, 
Mr. Gladstone stated that tea now cost one-quarter, 
and sugar one-sixth, of the price they commanded 
fifty years ago. Tea, in its rapid advance to ever- 
increasing popularity, has never been exposed to the 
attack by which coffee was at first assailed. Thus, 
we read iu Messrs. Thornbury and Walford’s “Old and 
New London” that the rainbow Tavern in Fleet-street 
was the second coffee-house opened in the Metropolis. 
Four years before the Restoration, William Farr, a 
barber, began to offer ooffoo for sale next door to 
the Rainbow, trusting to the youg barristers in the 
