Page:Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay.djvu/186

 the duties of all articles which entered into the composition and equipment of a ship, there could be no doubt that the rate of freight must soon fall below what it had been heretofore, and that it can never recover its former standard. This he considered a circumstance of considerable importance with reference to the trade of those colonies. The Honourable Member then read a letter from Mr. Charles James Steevens, (as we understood,) of Mark Lane, in which it was stated that the quality of the South Australian wheat was equal to that of the best Essex or Kentish wheat, and that from its peculiar character, owing to the heat of the climate, it was so dried as to sustain a long voyage without injury, and that the writer's opinions were founded on personal knowledge, having sold several shipments of it. The Honourable Member then read another paper, signed, as he said, by some of the most respectable merchants in the City of London, in which the same testimony was given as to the quality of the wheat and its capability to resist the injurious action of a long voyage; and it was stated that the price it fetched would be amply remunerating but for the duty, and it was prayed that the duty should be reduced to one shilling per quarter."

Although the idea of exporting wheat from Australia to England, seems to me quite preposterous, yet when I consider the present low value of rich