was that a reason that he should be taunted, as that honourable gentleman had been pleased to taunt him?

The view which he took of the question was shortly this; but he by no means pretended to say that he must be right. He thought, that any law which attempted to limit the rate of the interest of money was oppressive to those who wanted to borrow. The honourable gentleman was of opinion that the law was advantageous to the borrower; and yet, by a strange inconsistency, in describing the relative situation of the borrower and the lender, he maintained that the borrower was the party obliged to yield to the terms of the lender. The honourable gentleman had also alluded to the obloquy which attached to those who lent at a large rate of interest. But that obloquy was, as the law now stood, an aggravation of the misfortunes of the borrower; who was obliged to pay the lender a premium, in order to induce him to submit to the obloquy. Nor was it obloquy alone for which the borrower was compelled to pay the lender. He was obliged to pay for the whole course of evasion to which the existing law necessarily gave birth. From the evidence which would be proved in the Report of the Committee of 1818; from all that he had observed in other respects; and from all the reflection which he had been able to bestow upon the subject, he was perfectly satisfied, that the Usury Laws were oppressive and injurious to the borrowers of money.

He was not much surprised that individuals connected with the landed interest should have expressed their dissent from a proposition for repealing the present laws. In the first place, the landed interest always felt a much greater indisposition to a change of any kind, than the commercial did. For his own part, however, he was convinced that the law, as it stood, must, in the course of years, put the interest of landed proprietors to great hazard. It was well

known, that, during the late war, it had become, in consequence of these laws, often difficult to obtain money by mortgage on land; and the consequence was, that the value of land had become unduly depreciated. He attached so much value to the repeal of the law, by which the interest of money was regulated in this country, that, if the gentlemen who had mortgages on their estates at five per cent., would be satisfied with a clause in the bill, providing that those mortgages should not be affected by the alteration of the law, whatever he might think of such a provison, he, for one, would consent to its admission. Much had been said of the existence of similar laws in other countries. But, was there any resemblance between them? Did the Usury Laws in Holland empower any one to sue a man who had been guilty of usury, for penalties trebling in amount the principal which he had so lent?

The advocates for these laws talked of the ingenious evasions which took place respecting it; but it was of those very evasions that he complained. Those evasions were frequently ruinous expedients; and he charged the law with them. Adverting to the argument which had been made by an honourable gentleman, to show that those who derived their income from money transactions did not contribute so much to the revenue as the landed interest, he contended, that nothing could be more opposite to the fact. He was utterly at a loss to conceive how any one could, for a moment, suppose that from whatever source income was derived, whether from land, from the funds, from commerce, or from whatever other quarter, it did not pay equally in taxation to the revenue.

On the question, that the Speaker do leave the chair, the House divided: Ayes, 43. Noes, 34. The second reading of the Bill was afterwards postponed for six months.

MR. HUME'S MOTION FOR THE REDUCTION OF THE

SUGAR DUTIES.

March 8.

The House being in a committee of ways and means, Mr. Huskisson moved, "That the several Duties on Sugar granted in the last session be farther continued." Mr. Hume proposed, by way of amendment, "That 7s. per cwt. be taken off the Duty on Sugar." He was induced, he said, to do so, from the claim which the WestIndia Interest had to relief, and from his conviction, that the nation would be benefited by the consequent reduction in the price of an article of such universal consumption. Mr. Baring suggested, that if the Government, instead of reducing the Duty on Sugar, would permit the distillers to make use of that article, where they now used barley, the measure would at once have the two-fold good effect, of encreasing the consumption of sugar, and of preventing the introduction of foreign barley.

Mr. HUSKISSON said, that if he understood the purport of the honourable member for Aberdeen's observations, respecting the effect of high duties on tobacco and wine, it was, that they prevented the consumption of those articles. This, however, hardly seemed to be the correct conclusion, from the statement on which the honourable member's opinions had been formed; which was, that the high duties gave rise to extensive smuggling, and although the revenue was thereby diminished, the consumption was increased. As the honourable member then admitted, that there was little or no smuggling of sugar, it was difficult to understand how he made the argument which he had drawn from the duties on tobacco apply to sugar. The same might be said of the wine duties, even if the facts assumed by the honourable member should be admitted, for the purpose of the argument.

But the honourable member had said that, from the termination of the war in 1814, there had been no increase in the consumption of sugar. Now this was so far from

being the fact, that he would assert, without the fear of contradiction, that no article had experienced an increased consumption proportioned to that of sugar, since the year 1814. He would not detain the Committee at any length upon this part of the subject; but it was quite impossible, after the honourable member's assertion, that he could forbear to state the fact as it really stood. For the three years ending on the 5th of January 1814, the average consumption of sugar was 2,215,000 cwt.; in 1821, it was 2,763,000 cwt.; making an increase of 548,000 cwt., or twenty per cent. on the total consumption in seven years. By a document which was on the table of the House, it would be seen that the consumption, up to January last, was 3,330,000 cwt., equal to an increase of forty per cent. on the consumption of the last nine years. In the face of these figures, he would ask the honourable gentleman, whether the high duties on sugar (and he had admitted that there was no smuggling) had checked its consumption ? In Ireland, unfortunately, the circumstances of the country prevented the great bulk of the people from using this article so extensively as the people of England. But their distresses were not to be relieved by the diminution of a halfpenny in the pound on the price of this, which, though not a necessary, was one of the first luxuries of life.

Looking, however, to what was a material point-the question of relief to the consumer-he would call the attention of the Committee to the progressive increase of supply, compared with the increase of consumption. In the year 1814, the old colonies-he meant those which belonged to the Crown previous to the year 1792-produced an excess of supply amounting to 322,000 cwt., and the new colonies, at the same period, produced also an excess of 307,000 cwt., making together a total excess of 629,000 cwt. Since that period, the increase of consumption had

amounted to 921,000 cwt., and this set-off against the lastmentioned amount would shew that the increased consumption had more than kept pace with the increased supply. He had no reason to doubt, that if the consumption of sugar went on in the same increasing ratio which marked its present progress and he saw no reason to expect otherwise they would shortly arrive at that happy state of things, in which they would find the whole supply of the West-Indies not exceeding the actual demand for the article in this kingdom. To shew the vast increase in the consumption, they had only to look at what was its amount last year, with the foreign export of the article, and compare the total with the largest supply ever received from the West-Indies in any given year. The greatest supply was 3,785,000 cwt.; the consumption last year was 3,130,000 cwt., leaving a difference of about 655,000 cwt. for export. The export of sugar last year amounted to 137,000 cwt. more than on any former year. He found, in fact, from authentic documents, that the increased foreign and home consumption during the last year, exceeded the greatest annual supply that had ever arrived from the WestIndies. In the year 1822, the average price had been only 328. 10d., while, in the last year, it had risen to 348. 7d. per cwt. The increased consumption had occasioned the augmented price. Those who were best able to form calculations on such a subject were of opinion, that it was not possible that the British West-India colonies should produce a larger supply than they did produce in the last year. In the older colonies, the tendency was, perhaps, to a diminution; and in the new colonies, particularly in Demerara, which had recently mainly contributed to the depression by throwing a great quantity of sugar upon the market, as there was no possibility of importing new slaves, and as all the land capable of being employed in growing the sugar