The Government has appointed a Commission to consider the sugar
question in the West Indies, placing Sir Henry Norman at its head. The other members are Sir David Barbour and Sir Edward Grey, and they are to examine and report upon the spot. The West India planters declare that they are ruined by the fall in the prices of their sugar, which amounts to 35 per cent., and is due to the fact that the Con- tinental Governments pay bounties upon the export of the beetroot product. They ask, therefore, for "countervailing bounties," which would, it is estimated, cost the British Government £3,000,000 a year until the Continental Govern- ments gave way. The popular objection to countervailing bounties, that they interfere with Free-trade, is unsound, Free- trade being based on the datum that no industry shall be artificially fostered ; but the West India sugar-growers, we imagine, must hit upon some other kind of ameliorating- measure. No Chancellor of the Exchequer would propose to expend three millions a year in assisting a particular in- dustry which desired to raise the price of an article of food. Too much is now known of the extreme value of cheap sugar as an article of diet. The ease with which sugar can be obtained is said to be at least one cause of the great improve- ment in the height and bulk of our city populations, more especially among the young women who work. It must not be forgotten either that the wheat-growers of Great Britair are quite as severely hit as the sugar-growers of the West Indies.
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