The result, as might have been foreseen, necessarily created and stimulated a demoralizing system of fraud, unjust and destructive to the interests of the coffee planter, and prejudicial to the national revenue.
The effects of so baneful a system being equally manifest upon both consumption and revenue, they are here separately illustrated.
In 1824, according to the following high scale of duties, viz., 1s. on West India, 1s. 6d. on East India, and 2s. 6d. on foreign, the Customs derived from coffee was £420,988; in the following year the rates were reduced one-half, and in the short space of three years the amount yielded had advanced to £440,245, an increase which steadily progressed (partly aided by the admission of the produce of British India at the low duty) until it reached £921,551 in 1840. These satisfactory results justified a further reduction of the duties in 1842 to 4d. on colonial and 8d. (and in the subsequent year to 6d.) on foreign, under which the revenue declined in 1844 to £681,616. In 1846 it had again reached to £756,838, and was gradually recovering itself, when this system of adulteration first began to extend itself generally, and since that time the revenue has rapidly declined under the same scale of duties to £566,822 in 1850.
In 1824 the quantity retained for home consumption was 8,262,943 lbs., which was augmented to 11,082,970 lbs. in the first year of the reduction of duty, and continued to exhibit an increase at a rate rather exceeding two million pounds per annum until 1830, when coffee would appear to have reached its limit of consumption without further stimulus, and remained stationary until the modification of duties allowing the admission of foreign coffee, via the Cape, at the colonial rate, when it advanced from 23,295,046 lbs. in 1835, to 28,723,735 lbs. in 1840; and consequent upon a further reduction of duties in 1842, the elasticity of the trade experienced a still wider development, and an increase of nine million pounds is exhibited in the next five years. From that period, however, the general use of chicory has not only checked the progressive increase of this healthy demand, but an annual decline is observable to the extent of above six million pounds in 1850, as compared with 1847.
On the 15th of April, 1851, with the view of partly remedying the grievance of the colonists on this head, the duties were equalized and reduced to 3d. The results are, however, far from satisfactory, either in a fiscal or commercial point of view. It is true that an increase in consumption, of one-and-a-quarter million pounds has taken place, but at the sacrifice of £121,000 of revenue. But this increase, it will be seen, has not exceeded 4¼ per cent., whilst there has been a diminution of 21½ per cent. in the revenue receipts. Upon investigation, moreover, it will be found that, notwithstanding the total increase exhibited, there has been an actual falling off of 894,778 lbs. of colonial coffee in 1851; the items for last year are, however, much more favorable and encouraging for the planters.
No reasonable cause can be assigned for this rapid and serious diminution in the consumption of coffee, except the notorious substitution of chicory and other substances.
The arguments advanced to account for the falling off in the consumption of coffee, by adducing the increase of tea and cacao for a similar period are fallacious, and contrary to the commercial experience of many years, which convincingly proves these kindred articles to have always simultaneously increased, or diminished, in ratio with the general prosperity of the kingdom, and the prevalence of temperate habits among the community.
I shall now proceed to trace the fluctuations in the consumption of coffee.
At the close of the last century the consumption of coffee was under one million pounds yearly; the only descriptions then known in the London market were Grenada, Jamaica, and Mocha—the two former averaging about £5 per cwt., and the latter £20 per cwt. Grenada coffee is now unknown, and Ceylon and Brazil are the largest producers. In 1760, the total quantity of coffee consumed in the United Kingdom was 262,000 lbs., or three quarters of an ounce to each person in the population. In 1833 the quantity was 20,691,000 lbs., or 1½ lb. to each person. When first introduced into England, about the middle of the 17th century, coffee was sold in a liquid state, and paid a duty of 4d. per gallon; afterwards, until the year 1733, the duty was 2s. per lb.; it was then reduced to 1s. 6d., since which it has paid various rates of duty; in the year 1824 it was settled at 6d. per lb. All descriptions of coffee now pay but 3d. per lb.
The consumption of coffee in the United Kingdom, for several years previous to 1825, varied from seven millions and a half to eight millions and a half pounds in round numbers, the duty being 1s. per lb. on British plantation, 1s. 6d. per lb. on East India, and 2s. 6d. per lb. on foreign. From the 5th of April of that year those rates were each reduced to one half, and the immediate consequence was a steady increase of the consumption until 1831, when it amounted to 23,000,000 lbs. The consumption continued, without any material variation, at this rate, or to advance by very slow degrees, until 1836, when the duty on East India coffee was reduced to 6d. per lb.; and this change had precisely the same effect as the previous one, for the consumption again advanced to upwards of 26,000,000 lbs., which was then considered, in a memorial of the London trade, to be as much as our colonies were capable of producing! We now find, however, one small island, Ceylon, producing a fourth more than this amount annually.