THE GOVERNMENT AND THE WEST INDIAN DEMAND.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—You ask a question in your footnote in the Spectator of December 4th, and I am simple enough to suppose that you desire an answer. I gave you the average price of the last thirteen years in order to show that the confectioners and others had been paying a price which would not be exceeded if protection to foreign producers on British markets were abolished. But during that period, owing to the artificial stimulus to overproduction created by bounties, and the consequent periodical forced reduction of production, prices have fluctuated violently, sometimes being below cost price, and sometimes far above it. The West Indians saw no hope of stability, they lost credit, they dared not expend money on improvements in manu- facture or extension of cultivation, they never knew what would happen next, they saw bounties increased in order to save Continental producers from the fatal effects of their own overproduction, and they saw that this must lead to an aggravation of the evil. The beetroot-producers themselves see the fatal results of such a system, and are praying that bounties may be abolished all round, so that they may have some hope of a more stable condition of things, when pro- duction will be governed by natural advantages and prices regulated by the ordinary laws of supply and demand. All this seems to require no explanation ; but you ask for it, and I give it.—I am, Sir, &c.,
[The sugar industry is not the only industry which has been subjected to great fluctuations of price. The ups and downs have been as great in other products.—En. Spectator.]
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