Duty              Singapore price
Year    Quantity consumed    s.  d.         s.  d.        s.  d.
1811        1,457,383        1  101/2         0   71/2   to   0   73/4
1814          941,569        1  101/2         0  11     "   1   1
1820        1,404,021        2   6          0   61/2    "   0   63/4
1824        1,447,030        2   6          0   43/4    "   0   51/2
1826        2,529,027        2   0          0   4     "   0   41/2
1836        2,749,491        1   0          0   0     "   0   0
1837        2,625,075        0   6          0   0     "   0   0
1845        3,210,415        0   6          0   21/4    "   0   43/4

In a memorial from the mercantile community of Singapore, sent home in 1848, it is asserted that a reduction in the duty of pepper being always attended by a large increase in the consumption, would not lead to any serious loss in the revenue, while it would confer a great boon on the poorer classes, to whom it has now become a necessary article of life.  The reduction would also be of great advantage to British manufacturers, as well as to our Indian possessions, by giving rise to an increased demand or British goods and productions, and of the highest benefit to the agricultural settlers in the island of Singapore, by enabling them to procure for their labor an honest means of livelihood.

The pepper vines, which are allowed to climb poles or small trees, are tolerably productive at Singapore; and pepper planting is esteemed by the Chinese to be a profitable speculation, particularly if they are enabled to evade the payment of quit-rent.  An acre of pepper vines will yield 1,161 lbs. of clean pepper.  In Sumatra a full grown plant has been known to produce seven pounds; in Pinang the yield is much more.  The average produce of one thousand vines is said, however, to be only about 450 lbs.

Colonel Low, in his “Dissertation on Pinang,” published at Singapore some years ago, gives an interesting account of the culture:—­

“Pepper was, during many years, the staple product of Pinang soil, the average annual quantity having been nearly four millions of pounds; but previous to the year 1810, the above amount had decreased to about two-and-a-half millions of pounds, which was the result of the continental system.

The price having fallen at length to three and three-and-a-half dollars the picul—­with only a few occasional exceptions of rises—­the cultivation of this spice was gradually abandoned, and the total product at this day does not exceed 2,000 piculs.  The original cost, when pepper was at a high price, together with charges of transporting it to Europe, amounted to L36,357 for every five hundred tons, and the loss by wastage was estimated at L5,405.  In 1818 there remained on the island 1,480,265 pepper vines in bearing, and the average value of exports of pepper from Pinang, including that received from other places, was averaged at 106,870 Spanish dollars.