BREAD, TEA, AND SUGAR.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR."1 SIR,—When you assume (Spectator, August 22nd) that if about 212,000,000 of taxation be taken off tea and sugar and put on corn, even if it were all put on wheat, which would not be the case, a poor clerk would have to do with less bread, I submit that your argument is unfair. The hypothesis is that the sum put on oorn—or let us say wheat—would be simply what is taken off tea and sugar, which the poor clerk consumes, it may be concluded. Suppose, then, that he now pays a shilling a week in duties on tea and sugar, which will be remitted and put on the bread he consumes. You assume that, in order to spend only as much as he spends now on bread, tea, and sugar, he must consume less bread, and that extra tea and sugar will not compensate him for the loss of the more substantial food; whereas the truth is that he would be able to consume as much of each of the three commodities as he consumes now, without being a penny the more out of pocket.—I am, Sir, &c., [Possibly we pressed our illustration of the dyspeptic clerk too far; but how about the case of a man who, as so often happens, lunches without taking any beverage which it is proposed to untax ? What consolation would it be to him to know that though bread was dearer, coffee and tea were cheaper P—En. Spectator.]
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