Mr. Crawford brought forward his motion for a uniform scale
of duty on sugar, instead of the variable scale proposed by the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer yesterday week, and failed miserably, getting only 17 to vote with him, while there were 133 against. Mr. R. B. Sheridan was rather less unfortunate on Thursday last in his motion for reducing the fire-insurance duty one-third, that is, by one shilling on all sorts of insurances, instead of reducing it by one-half (or is. 6d.) on stocks in trade only. He lost his amendment by 170 to 117, or 53,—fortunately, we think, as his amendment would have cost the revenue nearly twice as much as Mr. Gladstone's proposal, and swallowed up the whole surplus. Probably, too, it would have given much less chance of a partial recovery of the revenue owing to increased insurance.
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