the duty on two boxes of sugar, not probably worth as many farthings in the gross, and the duty on which would scarcely realise forty shillings; coming for wool, and being kicked back shorn; opening their case with fierce imputations of fraud and chicane upon the Queen's subjects, and ending it by extracting from the jury a certificate of character in favour of the London Dock Company; now modestly give out the farce which has already been damned by an unequivocal verdict, for repetition until further notice. Vociferous encores call Mr. Hamel back to the same stage on which he has topped his part of rustic low comedy; and so heartily do the Board applaud the piece, that they insist upon its being acted over again to crowded houses. A new trial is moved for by the Crown-the twelve jurymen, the eight connsel, the two solicitors, and two assistant-solicitors, the eighty witnesses, and the one judge, are to hatch one chick for eleven days more, 'regardless of expense,' or, 'all at the small charge of £27,000,' with £3,000 in, to make up the £30,000, in discussing the rule, to show cause why the new trial should not be granted.

"It is a comparatively trivial caution to ask the tax payers of these kingdoms to see how the money goes.' Any attorney in a private case, who would dare to advise a rich nobleman to raise one hundred and twenty actions simultaneously against one or two men in the ordinary circumstances of middle life, would, by that act alone, without any inquiry into the nature of the suits, probably run a vey great risk of being struck off the rolls. Any great man, who, not contented with piling cost upon cost on the shoulders of an ordinary citizen, and in defiance of the unanimous verdict of a special jury, insisted upon racking his victim upon the long bills of a new trial, would unhesitatingly be accused of wresting the law to the purposes of oppression. But where the inexhaustible resources of the Crown are recklessly effused to exhaust the substance of the Crown's subjects, and the Sovereign, by her ministers, in place of bowing to the award of her own tribunal, under which every good citizen is taught to look for safety and shelter from injustice, ignores the authority of her own court, virtually tells her own judges that they are incompetent and unjust, and that majesty itself will unearth its victim from the protection of a judicial verdict, and hunt him. down by the depletion of his purse, which neither his innocence nor a second victory can save, we have no words to express the depth of our disgust of an act which should stink in the nostrils of every unprejudiced thinker, It is a more thrilling version, a deepening portraiture, of Sir Giles Overreach, and his wretched neighbour Frugal : :

"I'll bid my men break ope his fences,
Ride o'er his standing corn, and in the night
Set fire to his barns, or break his cattles' legs.
These trespasses bring on suits, and suits expenses,

Which I can bear, but will soon beggar him.

When I have harried him thus for two or three year,

In spite of all his thrift and care he'll grow behind hand,
Then, though he sue in forma pauperis,

I'll safe undo him!'

"The Crown should be more tender of its subjects than they are of each other. It should not stretch the law even to the verge of its rights. As it is powerful, it should be merciful. By its prerogative of paying no costs, it virtually has the means of ruining any man, however innocent, who maintains a plea however just. The London Dock Company has substantially proved its innocence, and established the righteousness of its defence. The right of the Crown to an immunity from costs can, in a free country, be tolerable only when exercised with the most forbearing and self-denying discreetness; because it involves the faculty of an absolute dictator of the fortunes of the lieges. The public is imperatively called upon, in its own defence, because the case of the Dock Company may at any time be that of every private citizen, to decide, now and here, whether this prerogative of the Sovereign has in this case been asserted with a just deference to the fair rights of the subject. The materials for judgment are fully before us. One hundred and nineteen informations are still pending over the devoted heads of two establishments, the pride and glory of the commerce of England, the chief collectors of the public revenue, the great instruments of the suppression of smuggling, managed on a system, the excellence and perfection of which extort the unqualified but unwilling praise of the fiscal officers who have been examined before the Select Committee of the House of Commons. The one hundred and twentieth has been already decided, at a ruinous expense, in favour of the subject, in the Queen's own Court. But the Crown will neither accept the verdict, nor abandon the weaker, because postponed, prosecutions. At this moment the humble servants, even day labourers, of the two great Companies have been arrested, and, but for bail having been found, would be now rotting in prison, (their families meanwhile starving on the outside) on charges of felony, for simply obeying the orders of their employers. These indictments have been brought by the Crown upwards of twelve months ago, and have neither been followed up nor withdrawn to this hour. The victims are out on bail, and liable at any moment to be placed in the felons' dock for the most innocent pursuit of honest industry, and yet they cannot bring the Attorney-General either to try them or let them go. He withdraws records, after putting the Docks to all the expenses of preparing for trial, and laughs at them under his immunity from costs. He brings indictments, refuses either to go forward or go back, and suspends the terrors of his legal enginery over poor labouring men, in defiance of the rights of the subject, and the

fundamental principles of a constitution jealous of the privileges of the people, and the powers of the Sovereign."

The Committee would only observe, in conclusion of this painful subject, that they cannot lend their sanction to the prominent pretext assigned by the Board for these prosecutions, that a chief aim of their institution was the protection of the commercial community from the embezzlement of the goods entrusted by them to the Dock Companies. This is altogether a volunteer proceeding on the part of the Board, for which there was no call, and the Customs had no commission. Their duty is to guard the revenue of the Crown, not the property of the merchant; and the only effect of their no doubt well-meant officiousness is to degrade the mercantile character and institutions of this country in the eyes of foreign states; and to excite alarm and distrust in the minds of all foreign merchants who make consignments to this country, or transmit goods through our agency in transit to foreign consignees. Should the impression become general which the Board has laboured to convey, that the property of our foreign correspondents is not secure from plunder in the custody of our great Dock Companies, it is not these establishments alone that would suffer, but our whole foreign trade, and especially our foreign shipping, which could expect very little employment in carrying foreign goods to be embezzled in our Docks.

CHAPTER XII.

SEIZURES AND FORFEITURES.

THE Board makes its own law, and interprets it in its own favor. The maxim of British law, which declares that "the Crown pays no costs" is practically tantamount to a declaration that its officers shall have the power not only to administer, but to make and interpret the law at their absolute discretion. The Committee have good reason to believe that an eminent house which had been induced, in support of the home trade, to give a large order for Spitalfields silks, of a superior quality and tasteful patterns, had them all seized as of French manufacture, and on the advice of their solicitors paid the whole duty, amounting to £300, to which foreign goods are liable, on manufactures of British production, simply because the costs of an Exchequer suit, in which they were certain of success, would have amounted to more than the illegal demand of the Crown. That this attribute of the Board is exercised to its utmost stretch of power, will be obvious from the following examples.

I. In August, 1818, a small vessel was dispatched from New Brunswick to Liverpool with a cargo of timber. Her owners were respectable merchants and shipowners in that colony. After the vessel sailed, they were informed that she had called at a port in the United States, and had there taken on board a larger quantity of tobacco, than the allowance fixed by law. On this fact coming to their knowledge, they immediately wrote by the steamer with the mail, informing their correspondent at Liverpool of this circumstance; and requesting him to take such steps as might be necessary. Their letter was duly received, and without loss of time, the Liverpool correspondent gave information at the Customhouse at Liverpool, so that the authorities might be prepared at once to act on the arrival of the vessel. Every thing in short was done for the protection of the revenue, on the part of the correspondent of the owners. On her passage, the vessel was caught in a gale on the coast of Ireland, by which she received considerable damage, and she was run into the nearest port that she might be refitted. On her arrival there she was over-hauled by the coast guard, and a part of the tobacco was found. On being apprised of these facts through Lloyd's agent, the consignee sent in a petition to the Customs, praying for the release of the vessel, transmitting the details of the " information" he had given before the arrival of the vessel on these shores. The innocence of the owners, nay their anxiety to protect the revenue was established ; but, nevertheless, the reply of the Commissioners was, that they could only grant the release of the vessel upon payment of a fine of £300, which was greatly more than the vessel's worth. Upon this, he addressed the Treasury with a full statement of facts, with the original confirmatory evidence. In return for which he was informed, "that proceedings had been commenced against the owners in Her Majesty's Court of Exchequer." Eventually the vessel and cargo were sold in Ireland. The parties in charge of her reported that they could do nothing at all with such a cargo in such a remote and unfrequented place on the coast of Ireland ;" and, ultimately, so far as the owners were concerned, both vessel and cargo were absolutely lost to them.

After these occurrences the consignce again applied to the Board of Customs

for the return of his vouchers and letters, as necessary to him, and useless to them; but it will scarcely be believed that this most reasonable request was peremptorily refused.-(9th Report, Case No. 27.)

II. During the days of the cholera and the sliding scale, when every vessel was running a race to enter its cargo of grain before a week's change in the average should raise the duty from the lowest point, it actually appears that this precious Board first kept grain ships out of port to ride cholera quarantine, and then charged the higher duty which a fall in the averages induced in the interval between the arrival at the port and the expiry of the quarantine! To this scandalous quirk the Board adhered until Mark-lane "wrung from the Treasury' its slow leave" to count the time of entry from that of arrival. But even after a Treasury order had been issued, an owner who procured a certificate of arrival of his wheat at Falmouth, found the duty raised upon him when he delivered it at London! All memorials to the Board and petitions to the Treasury were made in vain; but the parliamentary influence of Mr. Benjamin Hawes enforced that justice which the merchants' rights could not assert, and Lord Melbourne ordered a repayment of the duties in excess, which amounted to £5,000.—(9th Report, Case No. 88.)

III. Everybody has a grateful recollection of the tempting boxes of French plums which embellish the Christmas table, and please twice, in pleasing" him that gives, and him that takes." The fashion of the devices of the boxes is varied with some novel elegance every year, which aids the merchant in making the contents go off, and the customer in making them go down. Although, by long practice, and even a General Order of the Board, the plums alone are taxed, and the boxes, which add to the revenue by getting purchasers for the fruit, are passed free of duty, the largest importer in the trade has had his consignments stopped, at the most critical season, until Christmas is passed, and with it the sale of the plums, by pragmatical official Blunderbores, who took it into their heads, for want of anything else being there, that the boxes were very natty boxes, and too fine to go without a fine. A loss of £90 was sustained by this loggerhead seizure-and, although, after endless delays and the waste of no end of stationery on the Commissioners, the Board of Trade, and the Treasury, the goods were liberated-yet every now and then the same itch for stoppages seizes the officers, the same loss is sustained, the same complaints made, the same claims are refused, and some change in the appointments, which inflicts a "raw hand" upon the public, exhibits the disease "breaking out in a fresh place.”—(7th Report, Case No.76.)

It may, perhaps, be thought by some, that it is beyond the province of this Committee to make any remarks on the subject of improper application of the revenue, but as in the case which follows, not only was there a wasteful expenditure of the revenue, but a confiscation and destruction of the property of the merchant, it is regarded as not irrelevant to the subject of enquiry.

IV. A gentleman largely engaged in the tobacco trade has transmitted the following statement to the Committee:-In the month of May, 1845, I imported 5 hogsheads of leaf tobacco from New York, received samples of it when landed, and sold it for exportation. On sending the samples back to the Docks to be returned into the hogsheads and be exported, the 5 hhds. of tobacco were seized by the Customs' officers, as being partially manufactured, were condemned and burnt. I memorialised the Board of Customs to permit the exportation of the tobacco as it was sold for that purpose. but they declined to do so, and not only was my tobacco seized and destroyed, but the officer who seized it was, I understand, allowed upwards of £80 for his trouble. It could make no difference whatever to the Customs whether the tobacco exported was manufactured or unmanufactured, as no duty would have been paid or due upon it in either case.(Ath Report, Case No.34.)

In the exercise of the powers of seizure and confiscation of goods, where no fraud could possibly be intended, the following case affords a striking illustration of the practices of the Board.

V. A London house received in the course of their correspondence with a highly respectable firm at Constantinople, in October 1846, a bill of lading for a case of raw silk and otto of roses, as shipped to their consignment, on board the steamer Achilles