THE SUGAR BOUNTIES.
(To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.")
will meet your difficulties. It is known exactly what sugar receives the bounty, and the amount can be estimated with sufficient accuracy. The taking of a circuitous route to avoid the detection of its origin would probably cost more than the bounty. If it went to be shipped from some country which gave bounties, it would not evade the countervailing tax ; a country which-gave no bounty would be indisposed to encourage so injurious a competition by conniving at such an evasion. Our Custom House is quite accustomed to detect the country of origin. It had a case in respect to Jamaica rum only the other day. The fact that bounty-fed loaf sugar has closed almost every loaf-sugar refinery in this country is beyond dispute. We thus lose a home and export trade of two to three hundred thousand tons. Other branches of the trade may 'have to meet the same attack at any moment. It is entirely through our vigilance that this has hitherto been averted. Apart from sugar refining, sugar below cost price must sooner or later ruin the West Indies. They should, therefore, be very grateful to you and the Saturday Review for admitting the principle of a countervailing duty. It is difficult to understand why those who admit the principle should fear its application. A proposal of what is now admitted to be a Free-trade and not a Protective measure—not only consistent with, but positively conceived in the interests of Free-trade—cannot be condemned on the ground that it would be a signal for a war of tariffs.
Mr. Wallace is totally wrong in his pretended parallel. If the foreign protected manufacturer can naturally produce cheaper than his British competitors, we have no business to exclude him, and his protective duty is really of no service to him. If, on the other hand, he cannot, why fear him ? The theory that his home protection enables him to export cheaper is not sound. No one who is making a profit of a shilling would give away sixpence of it, in order to enable him to export below
cost price.—I am, Sir, &c., GEORGE MAaTINEAU, Secretary to British Sugar Reform Committee. 21 Mincing Lane, April 30th.
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