THE REPORT ON THE WINE DUTIES. [To T1111 EDITOR or
THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sut,—Permit me to point out what appear to me to be misapprehensions of the Report of the Wine Dutiee Com- mission, in your paragraph on that subject in your impression of July 19th. The Report recommends the retention of the shil- ling duty on wine, but instead of retaining the alcoholic maxi- mum for that duty, it recommends an advance of that maximum to a point above the present one of twenty-six per cent., that will embrace the wines of the Peninsula and. the Colonies. This new maximum will probably be 32 or 34 degrees of alcoholic strength, and will therefore admit, at the shilling duty, all natural or but lightly fortified wince, to the exclusion of the highly fortified fluids which are not wines at all, but wines plus something else, and which, besides the shilling duty, would be surcharged according to the per-centage of alcohol they contain.
As regards the " light " wines, the great experiment of 1860 has not, as you suggest, been lost sight of by the Commission; on the contrary, it suggests the logical sequence of that experi- ment,—a reduction below one shilling per gallon on wines of low alcoholic strength and low value. Both on moral and fiscal grounds, it is much to be desired that wines up to, say, 22 degrees of strength, and not exceeding, say, five shillings per gallon value, should be admitted. at sixpence, or even fourpeuce, per gallon duty ; but can we expect such a boon from a Govern- ment like the present, so largely supported by the great brew- ing and distilling interests P—I am, Sir; LiEc.,
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