in the five years ending with 1844, was--

lbs.
1840 329,310
1841 1,261,648
1842 1,312,804
1843 2,470,502
1844 1,278,413

40,000 lbs. were received from India in 1848; and 3,795 arrobas of
cassia were exported from Manila in 1847. In 1852, 2,806 cwts. of
cassia were received at Singapore from China, and 1,380 cwts. exported
from that settlement to the Continent, against 903 cwts. shipped in
the previous year.

What the Ceylon spice-grower wants, is an extended field of
operation--a larger class of consumers to take off his cinnamon, and
this can only be obtained by bringing it within the means of the great
mass of cassia buyers.

Look at the quantity of cinnamon exported by the Dutch in the middle
of the eighteenth century. Eight or nine thousand bales a year were
exported, and now, after a lapse of a hundred years, Ceylon hardly
sends away half that quantity. Yet the consumption of spice must have
kept pace with the increased population of countries using it, and so
it has. But the difference is made up, and more than made up, by
cassia from China, Java, Sumatra, Malabar Coast, &c., and though the
new article is not equal to the cinnamon of Ceylon, yet the vast
difference in the price obtains for it the preference. Now what the
Ceylon planter wants, is to be allowed to produce a spice on equal
terms, and of a superior quality to cassia, which might be done under
an _ad valorem_ export duty of 5 per cent. Spice of this description
of course could not afford the high cultivation bestowed on the fine
qualities, neither would it be required. In fact little or no
cultivation need be given it. At present anything inferior to the
third sort is not worth producing, because it cannot stand the
shilling export duty. But under a more enlightened system of things,
with a low duty such as I suggest, myriads of bushes would spring up
on those low, sandy, and at present unprofitable wastes that skirt the
sea-coast of the western province, around Negombo and Chilaw.

The difference of duty would be more than made up by the diffusion of
capital in planting, the employment of vast numbers of laborers, the
purchase from Government of many thousand acres of now valueless
flats, and all the attendant benefits arising out of the development
of a new field of operation for the colonial industrial resources.[50]
The cassia tree grows naturally to the height of 50 or 60 feet, with