§ A Petition of the West India planters, merchants and others at the port of Liverpool, interested in the trade to the British West India colonies, was presented and read; setting forth,
§ "That, notwithstanding the temporary relief afforded to the growers and importers of sugar, by the Act of the present session of parliament prohibiting the distillation of spirits from grain, and the admission of sugar as a substitute, the Petitioners cannot but recollect their past distresses, nor contemplate without alarm, the period when this prohibition may cease, and the ruinous depression of the price of sugar that must, in all probability, ensue and be consequent thereupon; and that, in anticipation of this possible, and, in the minds of the Petitioners, not improbable event, they humbly beg leave to refer the House to the suggestion contained in the report of the committee who were appointed to take into consideration the commercial state of the West India colonies, and to report their proceedings from time to time, which report was ordered to be printed ort the 24th of July 1807, videlicet, 'To extend 93 the principle which has been adopted on the contingent increase of duty from 27s. to 30s. per hundred weight, so that, from the maximum of duty then fixed on a gross price of 80s. per hundred weight affording 30s. duty, and 50s. to the planter and importer, the duty should be thrown back on a similar scale, in proportion to the depression of the market, till the price arrives at 60s. gross, leaving 20s. (the original duty) to government, and 40s. to the planter and merchant, or, in other words, a reduction of one shilling duty on a reduction of two shillings gross price from the average then fixed for the imposition of the new duty, as far as 20s. per hundred weight,' such regulation to continue until the conclusion of a general peace; and that the Petitioners also beg leave to call the attention of the House to the distresses under which the coffee planters have laboured for some time past, from the want of a market for that article, in consequence of which they have no other prospect before them than that of ruin to themselves and their families; and that, from these distresses, during the continuance of the war, the Petitioners see but one mode of relief, which is, to encourage, by every possible means, the consumption of coffee in this country; and, in looking to this object, the Petitioners have found considerable obstacles, not only in the still too high rate of duty charged on coffee taken for home consumption, but in the regulations which are adopted for the due collection of that portion of the duty which is placed under the superintendance of the board of excise, by obliging all retailers of coffee to lake out licences for their stocks, and all purchasers to take permits for its removal from place to place; and praying the House to take the case of the Petitioners into consideration, and to pass a Bill for levying the duties on sugar according to the scale suggested by the Committee in the report referred to, for repealing the Excise duty now payable on British plantation coffee taken for home consumption, and for removing the Excise regulations on the sale and removal of coffee, or to adopt such other measures, adequate to the permanent relief of the Petitioners in the premises, as to the House may seem meet."
§ Ordered to lie upon the table.