also. The talk, too, about slave-grown sugar was absurd, for we did not hesitate to trade largely in it with the Continent On the other hand, we had prevented the legitimate development of our West India Colonies by forbidding them to set up sugar refineries to compete with our own refining trade. Thus we managed, by our double system of preference, to confer a double injury on the nation and on the West Indies, in the hope of benefiting two selected industries.
But, bad as were the results of attempting to make the Empire self-sufficing in the matter of timber and sugar by preferring colonial products, they pale before those achieved in the case of coffee. The argument for preference looked at first sight as good, and proved in the long-run even more fallacious. We consume a great deal of coffee. Coffee can be grown in the Empire, and coffee is a very profitable crop. Therefore, let us encourage coffee-growing in the Empire by giving it a preference in our markets. In this way we can secure the profits of a very lucrative trade for ourselves. So ran the very plausible argument in favour of preference. Let us look at the facts. Before 1842 the duty on foreign coffee was as much as Is. 8d. per pound. On coffee imported from any British possessions within the East India Company's charter the duty was only 9d. The result of this was that the coffee-producing foreigner shipped his coffee to the Cape (which was within the charter), and it came in here at a 9d. duty. The importation of coffee from the Cape rose, therefore, from 189 pounds in 1880 to 6,149,189 pounds in 1842. At that date the duty on foreign coffee was placed at 6d. per pound, and on colonial at 4d. per pound, and ultimately the difference disappeared altogether. We had done very little good to the colonial grower, though we had placed a heavy tax on our own consumers without raising any large amount of revenue. The only persons who really benefited were the fraudulent importers of foreign coffee.
The astonishing position produced by Colonial Pre-
