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Original Papers: Excise Impediments to Design in Weaving.           33 
EXCISE MPEDIMENT TO DESIGN IN WEAVING. 
MUFACURES well know what a fearful incubus on the advance of Bri- 
tish glass manufactures was the Excise duty, which Sir Robert Peel abolished,
and how rapid and sudden has been the improvement in all branches of 
ornamental glass since the duty has been removed. At the present time the
progress of weaving is nearly as much impeded by the duty on card-board as
glass used to be. We have already noticed this grievance (vol. i. pp. 132,167),
and our attention has recently been called again to the subject by the corre-
spondence which has just passed between Mr. Kerr of Paisley, the Treasury,
and Board of Manufactures in Edinburgh. 
The Excise duty on paper is levied by weight, and though it oppresses, 
more or less, all manufactures with which paper is connected, it bears pecu-
liarly heavy on those where paper or card is merely an instrument in the
pro- 
duction, as in weaving, but is not the article itself ultimately sold. For
in 
weaving the weight of the card is necessarily very considerable. In propor-
tion as the pattern is elaborate, so are the number of cards and the weight
of 
the card-board, and consequently the amount of duty. 
Mr. Kerr, of Paisley, being laudably desirous of demonstrating his skill
in 
shawl-weaving in the great Exhibition of next year, appealed to the Treasury
for the remission of the duty in the particular instance of the articles
which 
he might produce for that occusion. His facts were good and his arguments
indisputable, but his mode of bringing them forward peculiarly injudicious,
and 
we are not surprised that "my lords" declined to comply with his
request, 
reasonable as it was. Mr. Kerr, in the midst of superfluous comment, said,-
"Your lordships are aware, that, in the fitting up of designs or patterns
for 
Jacquard looms, large quantities of card-paper are used, and that on such
paper there 
is charged it this country a duty to Government of lid. per lb. 
"I find one of the designs I have it in contemplation to prepare for
the Exhibi- 
tion would cost, before a single shawl could be produced, 4701.-of which
the sum of 
921. 15s. would be duty to Government, or a tax not less than 20 per cent
on the 
mere preparation and fitting-up of the design. In numerous instances such
prepara- 
tion of designs is entirely experimental, as the pattern may not take, and
it would be 
unprofitable to proceed with it. In such cases the duty in question becomes
a tax, 
not on gain but on actual loss sustained by the manufacturer in his business.
"The following are the particulars of the cost of the proposed pattern
:- 
424,000 cards, at 12s. 3d., inclusive of duty ..............  260 
Cutting, lacing, needling, and twines ... ................. 130 
Drawing and designing ................................     80 
X470 
Duty on 14,840 lbs. card-paper, at ld. per lb... £92 15s. 
"Now, in foreign countries, especially in France, where Jacquards are
principally 
used, no such duty is imposed on the manufacture of shawls. On the contrary,
it is 
the policy of the French Government to encourage the art of design ; and
one main 
cause of the excellence of the French shawl manufacture may be held to be
the 
exemption of the trade from all such obnoxious imposts.  .... 
"What I have, therefore, respectfully to solicit is, that your lordships
will have 
the goodness to authorise a removal or drawback of the particular duty I
have 
specified, and of all duties on card-paper used in designs for the Exhibition
of 185 
by the shawl manufacturers of Great Britain, so that we may be placed on
a some- 
what equal footing of competition with foreign manufacturers." 
We have said that Mr. Kerr's mode of addressing the Treasury was pre- 
judicial to his cause. Instead of quietly submitting a plain statement of
facts, 
he began his official letter with a scriptural quotation, which might, perhaps,
be admissible if he were addressing a remonstrance to a bishop, but is hardly
calculated to insure attention from a Government department. 
Failing with the Treasury, Mr. Kerr then addressed the Board of Manufac-
tures at Edinburgh, and although he was very near enlisting them as his 
Journal of Design. No. 20, October, 1850.                         F