§ Sugar produced £6,390,000, as compared with my estimate of £5,100,000. The main reason for the great excess was that there were large forestalments of sugar in December, January, and February, in anticipation, perhaps, of an increased duty. I think I may claim that the sugar duty has been a most successful tax. It has been successful in two ways, and for two reasons. In the first place, I wish to bear my strong testimony to the admirable work done by the Customs authorities in devising the details of the tax, and the tact and judgment with which they have carried it into execution. That has contributed greatly to the smoothness with which it has worked. In the second place, I have had a stroke of good fortune in the circumstances of the year. There has been, as the Committee are perhaps aware, an exceptionally good harvest of beet sugar; and that has lowered the price of sugar to such an extent that, so far as wholesale purchasers of sugar are concerned, I believe for several months past they have been paying only from 1s. 10d. to 2s. a cwt. more, including the duty of 4s. 2d. per cwt., than they paid a year ago. And although no doubt at first, as I anticipated, the retail purchaser of sugar had the price raised against him to the extent of ½d. in the pound, yet even that has gone down in many places certainly to ¼d. in the pound; and I believe in some cases to no increase at all, as compared with the prices last 165 year, when there was no duty on sugar. I hope it will be felt by the Committee that the somewhat doleful prophecies which came from some hon. Members whom I now see on the Benches opposite, including the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, as to the terrible burden that this sugar duty was about to impose on the working classes, have, to a great extent at any rate, been falsified.