which paid £2 10s. and £2 per ton respectively, were not for home consumption but for the English market, and no drawback was allowed on exportation. So also with the duties of ½d. and 1½d. on fur and hair sealskins, and of ½d. on kangaroo-skins. The duty on cedar of is. a solid foot or £1 on twenty spars was likewise a tax paid in the Colony on exportable produce. For these reasons such duties were unhesitatingly condemned by Riley in 1819, and by his brother in his evidence before Bigge in 1820. The only argument in their favour was the revenue to be thus obtained, but as they nearly succeeded in putting an end to the whaling trade, at any rate, even this purpose was not achieved.[1] The duty on sandalwood and pearl-shells of £2 10s. a ton, and on bêche-de-mer of £5 a ton, put a severe burden on commerce in the South Seas, but the trade was not injured so much as the whaling trade, probably because the pressure of the duty had merely the effect of increasing the pressure exercised by the masters and crews of the South Sea vessels on the natives who collected these products. The New South Wales duties, combined with those levied in England, brought the whole amount paid on each ton of oil placed on the English market up to £27 8s. 9d., while the Americans, who were the most prominent rivals in the South Seas, paid £7 more. But the freight from New South Wales was high, being £3 a ton to India alone. In 1817 there were forty tons of oil in bond at Sydney[2] waiting until the owners could pay the duty, and in 1819 a shipment was bonded in England for the same reason.[3] The duty as it stood altogether crushed the trade. Riley advocated a bounty in place of the tax on oil, for whaling would have been a good occupation for young colonials and have provided freight for ships returning to England.[4] The Government would have profited indirectly, for transport vessels were paid by tonnage, and the easier it was for them to find return cargoes, the lower would be the cost for their trip outwards.[5]
