Cassia bark fetches from 80s. to 105s. per cwt. in the London market, according to quality.  The imports appear on the decline.  In 1843 and 1844 we imported nearly two millions of pounds.  The quantity imported and retained for home consumption in the past four years are shown in the following figures:—­

Imported.       Retained for consumption.
lbs.                   lbs.
1848       510,247                76,152
1849       472,693                83,500
1850     1,050,008                97,178
1851       267,582                82,467

The cheaper Indian barks, as well as the cinnamon of the East, seemed at one time to be fast driving out of the market the superior class cinnamon of Ceylon.

In 1841 Java exported 400 cwts. of cinnamon; and the quantity of cassia imported into the United Kingdom from India and the Philippine Islands, 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.