Mr. J. B. Smith moving on Monday night to limit
the operation of the new sugar duties to a year, made a great speech in favour of a uniform.duty, in which he tried to make it appear that the refiners object to low sugar duties,—whereas they only object to a uniform sugar duty, which would enable the foreign refiner to send refined sugar here at the same rate at which they could import the alloyed sugar before the rubbish had been separated from the article in demand. It is as if Mr. J. B. Smith wished to charge duty on the ballast which a ship short of cargo might take in, no less than on the valuable cargo, and say that that was a deduction from the principles of free trade. Mr. J. B. Smith got only 13 gentlemen to agree with him, the motion being rejected bi- 97 to 14—a majority of 83.
Previous page
