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