equator and the latitude of 45 degrees, it is
evident that, were there a necessity for it, the actual production of
tea in China could be increased to an almost unlimited extent in the
space of three or four years, an extent far more than compensating for
the extra three per cent., which might be, in the first instance,
required by the British.

The certainty of an increased consumption following upon a reduction
in the price of tea to the actual consumers of it, is so obvious as to
require demonstration to those only who have not considered the
subject. The population of Great Britain and Ireland is, say in round
numbers 30,000,000, the actual consumption of tea is only 54,000,000
lbs., or little more than one pound and three quarters for each
individual. In the neighbouring island of Jersey, there are nearly
five lbs. of tea consumed by every inhabitant yearly; and as we may
fairly infer from analogy that similar results would arise from a
similar cause, the consumption in the United Kingdom in the same ratio
would amount to no less than 150 millions of pounds annually.

Tea, observes a most competent authority (Mr. J. Ingram Travers), is
the favourite drink of the people: all desire to have it strong and
good, and none who can afford it are without it. But in the
agricultural districts the laborers use but little; numbers of them
"make tea with burnt crusts, because the China tea is too dear." In
Ireland the consumption is greatly below that of England; there are
comparatively few people who do not, on company occasions, make their
tea stronger than for ordinary use, and the general economy in the use
of tea forms an exception to almost every other article of
consumption. As to the working classes in the manufacturing districts,
Mr. Bayley, President of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, himself a
very extensive manufacturer, and therefore well qualified to speak to
the fact, says:--"The common calculation of two ounces per head per
week I should think is very much in excess of what the working classes
consume. Domestic servants, I believe, have that quantity allowed
them, but I should say that the working classes do not consume one
quarter of that." And yet it is these classes who are the great
consumers of everything cheap enough to be within their reach. It is
this consumption that, under better earnings, has sustained the steady
increase of nearly two million pounds of tea per annum for the last
eight years, a