personal interviews with any of your honours, with power to grant all matter of course petitions, a great deal of the public time would be saved, and business conducted much more smoothly and agreeably."

With regard to obstacles thrown in the way of trade, and the imposing of fines without any good reason, the Committee would refer to the following correspondence between a house of extensive business in London and the Treasury which is as follows:

:

London, 5th January, 1850. XI. We beg to call your Lordship's attention to the difficulties thrown in the way of the importers of rough turpentine by the Surveyors of Customs.

Your Lordships are aware that rough turpentine is an article of low price, and consequently will not bear much expense for lighterage, landing, &c.; and to save such charges as much as possible, each distiller, either has his own sufferance wharf, or has made arrangements with some public wharfinger near his works, to land such turpentine as he requires, at a low rate.

We have for some years past been the largest importers of this article in London, and since it has been free from duty, we have received on an average 30,000 barrels annually, or about one-third of the consumption of London. For years past it has been the custom to take the turpentine from the ship into lighters alongside some public wharf, to enable the distillers to see the quality, and when sold, to land the turpentine at such Sufferance Wharf as the buyer may wish.

Within the last few weeks the Custom-house authorities have issued orders that the turpentine must be landed at whatever wharf it is first taken to; and as no distiller will buy turpentine when once landed at another distiller's wharf, we have endeavoured to get the buyers to look at it before it leaves the docks. We have done so in the instance of a parcel lately arrived in the Hendrik Hudson, and sold to respectable distillers, but found on its arrival at their wharf that the lighters were seized by the Customs, who have fined three lighters. containing about 700 barrels, £10, and will probably inflict a similar penalty on two lighters now in progress to the wharf. The reason given is, that the lighters have been more than three days laden. It is impossible to get turpentine always inspected by the buyers in three days; and should these regulations be adhered to, the owners of the property will suffer an absolute loss, instead of obtaining a fair profit; and this hitherto valuable portion of our business will be ruined.

We would also call your Lordships attention to the fact that when parties are accused of smuggling, on conviction, the fine is inflicted by a magistrate; whereas, in the present case, the Customs act in the double capacity of accusers and judges; and we believe the officers who lay the information are also entitled to a portion of the penalties inflicted.

We would submit to your Lordships that with but little extra trouble, the turpentine might be examined in the lighters previous to their leaving the docks; and as we understand has been done in one or two instances to accommodate the agents of the New York Packets; or that seven days may be allowed the importers to show the turpentine to the buyers, previous to its leaving the docks.

We also trust that your Lordships will be pleased to order that the fines levied by the Board of Customs may be remitted. We are, &c.

To which the Lords of the Treasury sent this reply upwards of two months afterwards.

Treasury Chambers, 11th March, 1850. Gentlemen,-The Lords Commissioners of her Majesty's Treasury have had under consideration your memorial of the 5th January last, complaining of the existing regulations in regard to the removal and examination of rough turpentine, imported at this port; and praying that certain fines imposed upon you on account of infringement of those regulations, may be remitted.

In reply I am commanded to acquaint you that my Lords are not prepared to sanction any remission of the fines imposed upon you, or to make any such alterations as are suggested by you in the existing regulations, in regard to the removal of unexamined goods; the practice now in force being necessary for the prevention of substituted goods and packages.-(3rd Report, Case No. 20.)

From a house of the highest standing in the East India trade has been received the copy of a petition to the Commissioners of Customs,

as to the repayment of a fine, which appears to have been imposed in a most arbitrary manner on parties who were in no respect to blame.

XII. A case of silk piece goods, per Lord Dalhousie, Captain Ferris, from Calcutta eutered by us on the Sth of January, 1851, having been detained by one of your officers, and a fine of £1 levied before delivery. We beg to request on behalf of the proprietor (a British subject, a native of India) that the same may be remitted on his account, inasmuch as neither he, nor we his agents are in any way blameworthy in this matter. The warehousing entry was made by us at the usual period and in the usual form, and is admitted to have been entirely in order, the only matter alleged to be irregular is that the captain's report specified the goods to be handkerchiefs, without stating of what material made (which he could not learn from the bill of lading) whilst an entry from the invoice gave every information. The fine has been nominally levied on Captain Ferris for "false report!" but really the fine will fall on the innocent owner abroad, as his goods are seized for payment. The captain's report was correct so far as his copy of bill of lading enabled him to know, and our entry was strictly accurate. May we intreat the reversal of the sentence of fine in this We are, &c.

case.

To this the Commissioners gave only a verbal reply," that the petition could not be complied with," and thus is a fine enforced where there is not the shadow of blame that can with justice be thrown on any of the parties connected with the transaction.-(9th Report, Case No.92.)

On comparing these cases with the letter of Mr. Lushington from the Lords of the Treasury of 1814, it will be seen that the Board and the Treasury itself, under its advice, have entirely ignored in practice the spirit of that wise and able document. They have diverted fines and satisfactions from their sole justifiable purpose of a penalty on fraud, into an instrument of punishment for unintentional error and innocent and excusable ignorance, a pitfall for the unoffending, and a source of pettifogging profit to the officers of the revenue, who are unworthy of their trust, if they require the stimulus of such motives to its discharge. The only wonder is, that with such discouragements to the legitimate pursuit of mercantile enterprise, and such obstructions to the honourable development of commerce by those whose chief duty it should be to promote it, we have any trade at all. As the whole foreign revenue of the country is derived from its merchants, and their ability to pay must depend upon the security and extent of their transactions, to overlay the sources of revenue with the finicalities of the details of its collection, is to sacrifice the aid to the means, and literally to "kill the goose that lays the golden eggs."

CHAPTER VIII.

RULES AND REGULATIONS-ORDERS OF THE BOARD AND OF THE TREASURY-THEIR ADMINISTRATION.

WITHOUT entering upon the discussion of the vexed question of the relative merits of direct or indirect taxation, it is impossible considerately to deduce from the following cases the significant inferences which may be drawn from them, without coming to the conclusion that independently of the inequality of the distribution of the burdens of the state which are supposed to result from Customs' duties, they offer, in the means by which they are levied in this country the most serious obstructions to the honourable pursuit of commerce, and thereby strike at the very root o the sources from which mainly the revenue can be drawn in any state which has attained any high degree of civilization, and its usual concomitant a heavy load of taxation. But dealing with the circumstances more immediately within their present province, and recognizing the derivation of the major proportion of the public income from Customs as an accomplished fact, it is still open to the Committee to submit for consideration the reflections which are suggested by the actual practice of our fiscal economy.

That it is infinitely complicated, unintelligible, and perplexing, is acknowledged by implication by the Chairman of the Board. Throughout his whole examination he makes the shipbroker his deus ex machina whenever he is hard pressed upon the unreasonableness of fining the merchant upon secret information, or confiscating his goods for some "ignorant sin." No sooner is he interrogated on the subject of his deciding against the merchant behind his back, upon data of which the latter could know nothing, than deus interest in the shape of a Customhouse agent, to extricate him from the "nodus." (A 79.) "The business is almost always transacted through agents or brokers." (A 92.) "The brokers and agents understand the Customs law, and the rules of practice, as well as we do ourselves." Now that is just the circumstance of which merchants complain. They have called again and again for a return of the lists of licensed Custom-house agents, brokers, lightermen and carmen, but hitherto without success, in order that it might be

G

clearly seen that such is the multiplicity, contradictoriness, and complexity of the orders, rules, and regulations of the Board, that no plain trader can transact his own business-that as there are practitioners in equity law, in common law, in ecclesiastical, and in criminal law, so there have sprung up, from the very necessity of the case, a class of attornies in Customs law, which has been made so intricate, voluminous, and incomprehensible to the ordinary intellect of plain men, as to demand the study of a life, and the institution of a separate profession. "An enormous retinue of shipbrokers and Custom-house agents is necessary, whose sole occupation consists in clearing goods at the Custom-house. Every merchant must keep a class of clerks whose chief employment is that of paying duties, making entries, calculating duties, and other fiscal business-insomuch that many traders declare that in reality they are the collectors of the revenue of the Crown." Even in reference to duty free goods, one of the largest merchants in London is prepared to prove, that while upon all the large imports which are yearly consigned to his house the duties do not amount to more than £150, it costs him upwards of £500 per annum for clerks, merely to clear them at the Custom-house.

A pernicious fallacy pervades the principle of the fiscal arrangements of the country, that the only question to which the Board have to address themselves is that of how the largest amount of revenue can be collected with the least possibility of evasion. It is altogether forgotten that there may be a difference betwixt the functions of a collector of revenue, and a detective officer-that although a reasonable provision may be made for the prevention of fraud, it cannot be permitted that in dealing with the merchants of England and respectable British subjects, the servants of the Crown shall frame their arrangements on the assumption that they have only to do with smugglers, rogues, and thieves; and that every trader or passenger must be presumed to be a contrabandist, until he proves that he is a scrupulous respecter of the law. The most perfect mechanism of collection may, we do not say must be the most destructive to the commerce of the country, and therefore, in an enlarged view, the least productive to the income of the state; because it is obvious that as the resources of a people are the fund from which alone revenue can be derived, and as these are dependant upon the extent and profit of their mercantile transactions, Customs laws which obstruct, embarrass, and therefore discourage trade, are literally suicidal. "An insane notion, observes a writer, "appears to pervade the whole spirit of Custom-house practice, that the trade of the country is quite a secondary consideration to that of scraping taxes together; and both the Government and the Board seem to act upon the principle, that they are entitled to do with

the commerce of the nation anything they please, provided they can plead as their excuse, that the collection of the revenue may be made more secure." Proceeding upon this theory of ministerial ethics, it has been the practice of the Board and the Treasury to postpone the introduction of all their acts relating to the department of foreign revenue to Parliament, until the very close of the session, that they may escape observation by being smuggled through sub silentio. To Sir James Graham the country is indebted for the detection of this manœuvre, and the defeat of a bill moved at the fag end of the session of 1850, which virtually proposed to hand over to the Board the whole powers of legislation of the three estates of the realm, by giving to all their acts, as well as orders, prospectively and retrospectively, the immunities and force of an act of Parliament. That extreme watchfulness over all such movements is essential for the protection of the public, and that it is occasionally an act of mercy to save the Commissioners from themselves, will too plainly appear, from the history to which the reader is now to be introduced, with but this preliminary premiss, that referring to the full details contained in the twelve reports published by the Committee, they will here occasionally avail themselves of the useful abridgments of the journals of the day.

The Committee have in their possession two certificates for repayment of what are termed "over-entries," one authorising the return of £1 4s. 1d., being the sum due on an over-entry of a cargo of copper ore from Algoa Bay; and the other, in like manner, sanctioning the payment of 5s. 9d., being the amount of an over-entry on a butt of sherry from Cadiz. To each of these documents there are twelve signatures required, three of which are those of Commissioners, who would thus seem to invent work, that they may have the appearance of having something to do.

As, however, a picture is more graphic than a description, it is considered it may be instructive to publish the following example, and it is here given "verbatim et literatim" :

I. This is to certify that

did enter and pay Customs Inwards, in No. 73, in the Ship "Traveller," Austin Master, from Cadiz, the 7th day of March, 1851, for one hundred and nine gallons of Spanish white , June, 1850.

wine, warehoused by selves,

And we, the officers under-written, having examined the accounts relative thereto, find no more than one hundred and eight gallons Spanish white wine delivered by virtue thereof: so that the said merchant over entered one gallon Spanish white wine. Galls. 109 entd.