ABSTRACT
BY common consent the most striking feature of Peel's administration was his commercial policy. He took up the task, which Huskisson had laid down, of freeing British trade from the old restrictions. His performance of this task could not but affect at every turn the relations of Great Britain and her Colonies. For Huskisson had left colonial preference an essential part of the British commercial system. Colonial goods were given privileges in British markets; colonial markets were still to a great extent reserved for British manufactures; and the colonial trade was still confined mainly to British ships. Not that the system was a unified whole: on the contrary it was almost grotesque in its lack of uniformity. In the tariff of the United Kingdom differential duties existed on many articles, but by no means on all: and where they did exist there was the utmost diversity. In some cases—wool being one—the colonial article was admitted free, the foreign at a moderate duty. In the case of fish oil, the colonial article was admitted at a nominal duty: the duty on the foreign product was prohibitory. Colonial fish was admitted free; most kinds of foreign fish were prohibited. On colonial (or rather Cape) wine there was a revenue duty of 2s. 9d. per gallon, on foreign wine a duty of 5s. 6d.—and there had been discussions with France on the question of a reduction. On colonial coffee there was a revenue duty of 6d. a pound, the duty on foreign coffee being is. 3d.; on colonial sugar the duty was 24s. per cwt., on foreign sugar 63s. In both of these cases the foreign rate was virtually prohibitory—unless indeed foreign coffee-growers went to the trouble of sending their produce to England via the Cape, when it could come in at a duty of 9d. 1 In the case of refined sugar there was a prohibitory duty even on the colonial article. The cases of timber and corn were peculiar. The British forests were virtually exhausted, but home timber still had a preference over colonial timber, in addition to the preference of colonial over foreign: the duty on foreign timber was high, but timber came in none the less from Poland and the Baltic. The British corn-grower, on the other hand, still fed the country, and protection was still the primary object of the corn law. The duty on colonial wheat, however, was only 6d. per quarter when the price was over 67s.—as it had been in 1839 on a general average, and in others of those lean years 1838-41 not infrequently—and 5s. when it was below that level, whilst the foreign duty became nominal only when the price reached 73L, and at lower prices became gradually so high as to be virtually prohibitory. 1
