§ MR. LOUGHTo ask the Secretary to the Board of Trade whether cane sugars grown in Porto Rico, the Sandwich Islands, and Louisiana, and beetroot sugar grown in the United States, pay no import or Excise duty, and cane sugar grown in Cuba only pays 80 per cent. of the United States duty; and whether bounties are paid to the growers of beetroot sugar by several of the separate States in the Union; whether refined 280 sugar exported from the United States receives a drawback equivalent to the whole duty, although the sugar may have paid no duty or a reduced duty; and, if this be so, whether the Government are bound by the Brussels Convention to prevent the importation of such bounty-fed sugar into the United Kingdom.
(Answered by Mr. Bonar Law.) The Answer to the first part of the Question is in the affirmative; only one State at present pays a bounty on beet sugar and only one factory benefits by that bounty; the drawback paid on sugar exported from the United States is 99 per cent. of the import duty paid on the raw sugar, from which it is refined. The last part of the Question does not therefore arise.