520 The Extraction of Sugar from the [September, 
in the Report of the Select Committee on Sugar Industries, 
ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 4th August, 
1880 ; the Committee having been appointed to inquire into 
the effects produced upon the Home and Colonial Sugar 
Industries of this country by the systems of taxation, draw- 
backs, and bounties on the exportation of sugar, now in 
force in different foreign countries. 
The Committee stated that loaf-sugar refining was formerly 
a considerable industry in this country, there having been in 
the year 1864 about thirty loaf-sugar refineries, converting, 
in round numbers, 200,000 tons of raw into 140,000 tons of 
loaf sugar per annum, and employing £ 600,000 floating and 
£600,000 dead capital, in addition to the capital employed 
in other trades connected with the business. From that 
year there was a gradual decline in the trade, until in 1875 
it became praftically extinCt. With the decline in the 
manufacture in this country there has been a continuous 
increase in the importation of loaf sugar from foreign 
countries. In 1863 the import amounted to 13,731 tons, of 
which 5285 tons came from France and 5960 h'om Holland ; 
in 1871 the import had grown to 78,551 tons, of which 
37,000 tons came from France and 27, 5 00 tons from Hol- 
land ; and in 1878 the import had grown to 157,807 tons, of 
which 115,683 tons came from France and 32,500 tons from 
Holland. This decline in our own country, and the exten- 
sion in other countries, of the production of loaf sugar did 
not arise from the want of enterprise or skill on the part of 
our refiners, or to any natural disadvantages they laboured 
under ; but the extinction of the manufacture in England, 
and its extension in foreign countries, was due to the fadt 
that the foreign refiner was enabled to put his sugar on the 
English market below cost price, owing to the bounty his 
Government gave him on the sugar he exported ; and of 
course against such competition the English refiner was un- 
able to contend successfully. 
At the time the Committee reported, no refined moist 
sugar, which had become an important branch of refining 
in England, was manufactured on the Continent ; but they 
observe that if the system of bounties on export was ex- 
tended to moist sugar, the ruin which had befallen the loaf- 
sugar refiners would likewise happen to the refiners of moist 
sugar. 
I understand that no refined moist sugar is ever now im- 
ported into the United Kingdom from the Continental 
States ; but whilst France has been lowering its bounties, 
the bounties in Germany, Austria, and Holland have been 
