TI1E CLEVER MEN OF LIVERPOOL AND 1HE DUNCES OF LEADENHALL
AND DOWNiNG STREETS.
THE tea-dealers and tea-merchants of London, by dint of chewing- Lord ALTHORP, have obtained a Committee of the House of Com- mons for the ire-pose of inquiiing into the new tea-duties. Thcre are yearly imported from six to seven millions of pounds of Bohea, or the lowest quality of black tee —chiefly to be mixed with the better qualities, all conformably to law, but pretty much in the spirit in wnich sloe and ash leaves are employed. Now, the examination of the customs, the necessary certificates of quality, &c. &c. will be very inconvenient to the parties who follow this practice; and so one specific duty fce. all teas, whatever be their quality or value, is loudly called for—becaase this will render all classification and examination unneces- sary. 'The duty named is 2s. per pound ; which on Bohea will be from 300 to 400 per cent. on the value, and on Congou from 1.50 to 200 per cent. ; while on Gunpowder and Hyson it will be from r) to lt 0 only. Thus, for the accommodation of the London tea dealers, the poor man would have to pay five times as heavy a duty as the rich man. While the noodles of Leadenhall Street are boring the Legislature, " the clever men of Liverpool" are willing to make an early experi- ment on the new scale of duties, and have just imparted from two to t1aaa-tliousaa1-oltaati-44tala.—aat4 imported it, too, of all places_ leitat expected, from Dantzic. What business had they to import tea from liantzic ? Why, the Act of Parliament, the 3d and 4th of William I V., cap. 131, says that it shall be lawful to import any tea from any place eastward of the Cape of Good Hope after the 22d day of April 1884; and so, Dantzie being exactly fifteen miles east of the said Cape, and the 22d of April having passed, the tea is legally imported. No dokbt, the intention of the Act was, that no tea should be imported front any African or Asiatic country east of the Cape; but it says nothing of this, so that Dantzic is as strictly within the letter of its provisions as Canton. Then let it be recollected, that the statute is a penal one, and to be most strictly construed. If the framers of Acts of Parlia- ment will be careless, let them take the consequences. The tea now imported from Dantzic will not probably be the only tea imported in the same way. There are large stocks at Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and Hamburg, which have only to be shipped to Dantzie, and then duly imported "from a place or port" to the eastward of the Cape of Good Hope. Even Petersburg, which is twelve degrees cast of the Cape of Good Hope, will furnish us probably with some of the exqui- site Caravan tea, which far excels all that is known under the name of tea in this countly. Without greatly raising the Continental prices, probably about 5,t )0,000 of pounds may be imported. This will be vet/ useful to the people, by bringing down the existing monopoly prices; for at the present moment, Bolles tea is selling at the India louse, exclusive of duty, at 11s. per pound,—whIch is three times the price of the same article, fresher and better, at Rotterdam and -Hamburg. By the way, there is reason to believe, that, in strict conformity with the letter of the Act of Parliament, tea may be imported from some parts of the United States of America. The words are "from the Cape of Good Hope and from places eastward of the same, to the Straits of Magellan." Within those bounds are New Orleans, Savan- nah, Charleston, Baltimore, Washington, and even New York. So you may, conformably to statute, obtain teas from New York, the em- porium of the China trade, a foreign port; but not at your peril from Halifax, Quebec, or Montreal, which are British possessions!
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