§ I have still, before I have exhausted the whole of the surplus, the best part 305 of £1,000,000 in hand. I think we are apt to treat our system of taxation too much as if it were divided into watertight compartments, as if, from the remission of one tax, one class and one class only gained, and from the remission of another tax another class and only that class gained. As a matter of fact, we are all parts of one organic and related body. If one member suffers, every other member suffers also. But, while that is perfectly true, the claim of the consumer, the rank and file of the army of industry, to some direct mitigation of the added load of recent years is clear, both on its own merits and in the interest of the State. The sugar duty is, for reasons which I have already stated, one which I should be glad to deal with; but it produces over £6,000,000 of revenue, and I am not rich enough to give it any effectual relief. Tea, which, like sugar, has become to the mass of our people a prime necessity of life, is more happily circumstanced. It is true that the duty was reduced last year from 8d. to 6d., but it is still by far the highest in proportion to its value of all the taxes levied on articles of food apart from alcohol. I have had the percentages taken out of taxation on the average values of articles charged with Customs duty in the year 1905, and they work out as follows:—;Cocoa, 13 per cent.; coffee, 25 per cent.; sugar, 30 per cent.; tea, 90 per cent. And if you take the cheaper qualities of tea the percentage, of course, would be much higher. A reduction, however small—;and the Committee will see that any reduction I propose must be small—;in the tea duty has, as compared with other remissions of taxation, several distinct advantages of its own. In the first place, tea, being an article which does not undergo, as tobacco does, after importation, more or less elaborate processes of manufacture and manipulation, the lowering of the tax is not intercepted or delayed, but goes almost direct to the consumer. He gets the benefit at once, or almost at once, either in a lower price or, what is often of greater importance, in an improved quality of the article. During the decade 1890 to 1900, when the duty was at its lowest point—;namely, 4d.—;the annual consumption increased by 55,000,000 pounds, or an average of 5,500,000 pounds a year. During the five years, 1901 to 1905, when the duty had been raised to 6d., 306 and stood for one year at 8d., the consumption increased by something over 9,000,000 pounds, or an average of something less than 2,000,000 pounds a year, showing a direct relation between the duty and the consumption. Again, an excessive duty on tea injures the producer as well as the consumer, and in this case, as I think my predecessor pointed out last year, the producer in nine cases out of ten is one of our fellow-subjects developing in India or Ceylon the resources of the British Empire. And, let me add, it is not unsatisfactory to be able to show that a small, but at least a substantial, reduction on tea is posssible without attempting or contemplating any revolutionary change in our system of free trade and without requiring the consumer to submit to a more than countervailing sacrifice in a new or added tax upon some other necessity of life, such as corn or meat. I propose that the duty shall be reduced by one penny, from 6d. to 5d., as from July 1st of the present year. Reductions of, or impositions on, the tea duty have been usually reductions or impositions of 2d. in the pound at a time; but, apart from the fact that I have not the means to suggest so large a reduction, let me remind the Committee that the duty will then stand at a lower figure than it has reached for a quarter of a century, except during the years from 1890 to 1900, when it stood at 4d. And when account is taken of the almost complete displacement in recent years of the weaker China tea by the stronger Indian and Ceylon teas, the actual burden on the consumer with the tax at 5d. will probably be as light as, if not lighter than, it has ever been before, and I am glad to think chat there is no part of the United Kingdom where the relief will be more felt than in Ireland. The cost of the reduction for the year I estimate at £920,000.