any material variation, at this rate, or to advance by very slow degrees, until 1836, when the duty on East India coffee was reduced to 6d. per lb.; and this change had precisely the same effect as the previous one, for the consumption again advanced to upwards of 26,000,000 lbs., which was then considered, in a memorial of the London trade, to be as much as our colonies were capable of producing!  We now find, however, one small island, Ceylon, producing a fourth more than this amount annually.

The Belgians, a population of 4,500,000, consume more than 33,000,000 lbs. of coffee annually; quite as much as is used by the whole 35,000,000 French.  The duty on 100 lbs. of coffee in France is more than the common original cost—­the Belgian duty not a tenth part; so that the French do not use 1 lb. of coffee per head, while the Belgians consume 7 lbs. each per annum.  The proportion in England is not more than 11/2 lb. per head to the population.  The United States are the largest consumers of coffee, as it is admitted into their ports free of duty, and can therefore be sold for nearly the price per pound which the British Government levies on it for revenue.  The entire consumption of the United States and British North America, calling their population 23,000,000 and ours 30,000,000, exceeds ours, on an estimate of population, by sixfold.  Thus the average consumption of coffee by each American, annually, is about 81/2 lbs., while the quantity used by each person in the European States is less than 11/2 lb.

The changes in the sources of supply, within the last fifteen or sixteen years, have been very remarkable.  The British possessions in the East have taken the place which our islands of the West formerly occupied.  The British West Indies have fallen off in their produce of coffee from 30,000,000 to 4,000,000 lbs.  Ceylon which, fifteen years ago, had scarcely turned attention to coffee, now exports nearly 35,000,000 lbs.  San Domingo, Cuba, and the French West India colonies are gradually giving up coffee-cultivation in favor of other staples; and it is only Brazil, Java, and some of the Central American Republics that are able to render coffee a profitable crop.  The export crop of Brazil (the greatest coffee-producing country), grown in 1850, for the supply of the year ending July, 1851, amounted to no less than 302,000,000 lbs., of this a large quantity remained in the interior to supply the deficiency of the current year.

It is scarcely thirty years ago that the coffee-plant was first introduced into Bengal by two refugees from Manilla; and the British possessions in the East Indies now yield 42,000,000 lbs.  Sufficient extent has not yet been given to enable it to be decided in what district of Continental India it may be most advantageously cultivated.  It is in the fine island of Ceylon, however, that coffee-culture has made the most rapid progress.