In the important article of COFFEE there has also been a serious loss upon the year's transactions; and this notwithstanding the fact that the import was lighter in 1851 than in either of the two preceding years, having been 22,100 tons of all descriptions against 22,700 in 1850, and 27,000 in 1849. The prices at the close of the year are stated by the _London New Price-Current_ to have been "from 8s. to 16s. per cwt. below this date last season." Messrs Littledale's annual circular shows a fall, in "native ordinary Ceylon" of 16s., and of 15s. in "middling plantation." The fall is less in some of the scarcer sorts. The greatest reduction, however, was in the middle of the year, "good ordinary native Ceylon," which was worth 57s. per cwt. in January, having fallen to 37s. in June. The total loss to importers, I am advised, cannot be estimated at less than £10 per ton, which, upon the total import of 22,100 tons, makes up an amount of £221,000 sterling. It is worth while remarking here, as an instance of the blindness of Whig legislation, that although the duties on coffee were reduced last year from 6d. on foreign, and 4d. on colonial, to a uniform rate of 3d., to the serious injury of colonial interests, and apparently with no other object in view, the consumption was very little increased, having been 31,226,840 lb. in 1850, and only 32,564,164 lb. in 1851. The actual vend by retailers of _what is called coffee_--the adulterated article--is, however, known to have largely increased; and the grocer and fraudulent dealer, by the use of chicory, the admixture of which with coffee the Chancellor of the Exchequer refused to restrict, and of other worse ingredients, have been enabled to put far more than the amount of the duty remitted into their own pockets. The stock held over from 1850 was 19,300 tons; and as this was very little reduced in December 1851, and the bulk of it was bought at even higher prices than those ruling at the commencement of the year, it will not be unfair to estimate the loss upon it at £10 per ton, the same as that upon the importations. I will, however, assume it to have been only, in round numbers, £150,000. This will make the _total loss on coffee_ £371,000.