not trust his judgment to decide what provisions are in force, and what not. Whether these laws, making different provisions and imposing different penalties in the same case, are to be construed as inconsistent, or merely auxiliary or cumulative, has been a vexed question with the legal profession and judicial tribunals. This embarasses, perplexes the importer, who looks to the law for direction, the lawyer whose counsel is asked, the customs official who is to execute the law, and, above all, the Secretary of the Treasury, whose duty it is to expound it, as a guide to his subordinates, and whose construction has the force of law until reversed by the judicial tribunals. Even the court of the last resort, our highest judicial tribunal, has, it is believed, felt more than once embarrassed in deciding what provisions in our revenue laws, still found unrepealed in terms on our statute books, were in force. If a tribunal so distinguished for legal learning and acumen, whose express province it is to interpret the laws, approaches the consideration of this subject with so much diffidence, and under such embarrassment, what can be expected of the hundreds of custom-house officials who are daily compelled to enforce the law, and who are rarely fitted by their previous education and pursuits for the difficult task of deciding such nice and doubtful points of legal construction? What, also, must be the condition of the merchant or importer, who has a right to demand of his government that the law he is required to obey should be intelligible to the common mind, should be a rule to guide, not a riddle which he is to solve at his peril?

This uncertainty and complexity of the laws obliges the importer to resort to others supposed to be well versed in the revenue system and forms to transact his business at the custom-house. Hence, to meet the necessity of the case, a large class of agents or brokers have grown up at our principal ports, who attend, at liberal compensations, to the importer's business at the custom-house. This operates as a tax on the consumer, because it is an expense which in the end must be paid by the goods.

This state of the laws gives rise, also, to litigation. Officers of the customs, if otherwise qualified, changed as they constantly are, can become but very imperfectly acquainted with the details of an extensive and complex system of laws. They have but little time for deliberation without impeding the operations of trade, and inflicting serious injury on the importer. Acting under such a pressure they are liable to err, even when the law is clear; but if it be complex or obscure, the errors become grave and frequent, and expose them to the legal claims of the importer for redress, for which, if they have acted in good faith, the government is bound to indemnify them. This operates as a heavy drain on the treasury, and impairs the public confidence in officers whose action is so often pronounced erroneous or oppressive by judicial tribunals.

This state of the law imposes on the Secretary of the Treasury a weighty responsibility and difficult duty in addition to those with which he is otherwise charged. He is made by law the authority to decide, in the first instance, the meaning of the revenue acts. His decision is conclusive and binding on the officers of the customs. Numerous calls are daily made upon him for his construction of the revenue and collection laws. Often important and doubtful, and always requiring to

be promptly resolved, these questions of legal construction demand thorough investigation; careful comparison of numerous statutes; references to judicial decisions; the exercise of a discriminating and well balanced judgment, and an exposition so precise and clear as to put the officer, who is to execute the law, in possession of a rule, the force and extent of which he cannot misunderstand or fail correctly to apply. The difficult and delicate labor thus thrown on the department is severe and oppressive.

This unfavorable condition of the laws, and the necessity of revision and simplification, may be seen in another respect. The Secretary of the Treasury has the power to mitigate or remit fines, penalties and forfeitures, incurred for violations of the revenue laws in cases not characterized by fraud or wilful negligence. If the laws could be readily understood, remissions would be rare. They are now, and have been for years, quite frequent, and necessarily so, and, of course, have a tendency to impair a reverence for law and its binding force, which is so often suspended to meet exceptional cases. The legal maxim that a knowledge of the law is always to be presumed, has lost much of its significancy in regard to revenue enactments, whose provisions are so numerous and their arrangements so confused, that our ablest lawyers have, in many cases, but little confidence in their ability rightly to construe them. Hence, when the remitting power of the department is involved, it is hardly equitable, in many cases, to hold the party to such presumption of a knowledge of the law so doubtful and difficult to be understood, as to render his neglect of its provisions indicative of a fraudulent intent.

Since the registering and coasting acts of 1792 and '93, and the general collection act of 1799-laws still in force-were enacted, the condition of the country and commerce has so changed as to require a careful revision and amendment of the code to adapt it to the present state and interests of navigation and trade. At the date of those laws, our foreign commerce was insignificant, measured by its past developement and present magnitude, and was concentrated at a few prominent ports on our Atlantic coast, carried on by sailing crafts; and our coasting trade was confined to our Atlantic ports and up a few navigable bays and rivers to the sparse settlements of the interior. Since then we have established an active commercial intercourse with nearly every part of the known world civilized or barbarous. Our interior and coasting trade has spread itself along the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and Pacific coasts of the United States, and penetrates the continent in every direction from ocean to ocean, not only by sailing craft upon navigable rivers and canals, but by vessels propelled by steam, in all the varieties of its application, and from point to point overland by railway, increased in activity, and diversified in operations a thousand fold. The United States now yield to Great Britain alone the superiority in commerce and navigation, and is destined, unless checked by some untoward event in the future, soon to surpass her, and take her position as the greatest maritime and commercial power on the globe. In 1793, when our present coasting law was enacted, the shore line of the United States, including bays, islands, and other irregularities, was but 9,885 miles in extent. With the additions of Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and

California, it is now extended to 21,354; and with the northern lakes, hardly known then as media of commerce, to 24,974; and taking into account also the extent of shore lines of rivers and bays in the territories since added to the Union, upon which now an active commerce is carried, the comparative condition of the country then and now will be clearly seen.

Since our earliest existing revenue laws were enacted an immense foreign and interior commerce on the Mississippi, its tributaries, and the lakes, has been developed with a wonderful rapidity-a thing not only not existing in fact when our present revenue system was established, but not existing even as a conception or anticipation in the mind of any man then living. In 1800-one year after the general collection law now in force was passed, and seven years after the date of our present coasting law, the only crafts upon our great lakes were boats and Indian canoes, and the only trade barter in the rudest form. Now that commerce may be represented as near $350,000,000 per annum in value, and the tonnage at 225,000 tons. The acquisition of Louisiana, Florida, Texas, and California, opening up a vast trade through the great valley of the Mississippi and its tributaries, on the Mexican Gulf and on the Pacific coast of the United States, extended and quickened by the rapid settlement of the country and the development of the various resources, has brought within the control of the federal government a commerce, for the proper regulation of which our earlier laws, though framed with admirable skill and foresight, are, in their present form, entirely inadequate.

Such a revision of those laws is therefore required as will bring together, in a compact, simple, and intelligible form, such of the provisions of the existing systems as are applicable to, and such additions as are demanded by the interests of so extensive and diversified a

commerce.

Several successive revisions and consolidations of the British revenue and collection laws have been made under the authority of that gov ernment, to meet changes that have taken place in the navigating and commercial interests of the realm. This recission of obsolete statutes and adoption of new regulations, presenting the law in a compact, plain, and intelligible form, has been deemed but a just concession to the honest ship-owning, navigating, and commercial classes, who always suffer by the uncertainty and complexity of the laws, as well as a proper protection to the government itself against the attempts of the dishonest, who take advantage of such a system, with a fair prospect of impunity, to practise their frauds on the public revenue. Great Britain has thus recognized the necessity of reforming and simplifying her revenue code, although the board of trade and customs, who are charged with the administration and superintendence of her revenue and collection laws, were vested with a very large discretion, and to a considerable extent could, without new enactments, have adapted their regulations to the new and various exigencies of the commerce and navigation of the kingdom. But with us, where as little discretion as possible is to be left to the executive, and whatever is to be regulated by government should be the subject of precise and

specific legal provision, the necessity of revising, amending, and simplifying, our revenue code, would seem to be an imperative duty.

Impressed with this necessity, the Secretary of the Treasury, in his annual report of December, 1851, recommended the subject to Congress, and the Senate adopted a resolution on the 19th of January, 1853, devolving the duty on the Treasury Department. In accordance with that resolution, a report, forming Executive Document No. 77, of 33d Congress, 1st session, was made by that department, presenting a revision of the revenue laws, which will be found briefly explained in the accompanying statement marked B.

B.

Statement explanatory of the proposed revised code.

The revised code of revenue and collection laws, prepared in the Treasury Department under the resolution of the Senate of the 19th January, 1853, consists of fifteen chapters, the general contents of which are as follows, to wit:

Chapter 1. "Establishing the collection districts of the United States, and designating the port of entry and ports of delivery in the same."

This chapter arranges the entire territory of the United States into one hundred and six collection districts, following the existing arrangement of districts as to limits, wherever practicable, keeping in view, however, in all cases, the convenience of trade and the security of the

revenue.

Much conflict and doubt exist under present laws as to the extent and limits of several districts. This chapter prescribes fixed metes and bounds, and is moreover accompanied by a map on which the several districts are exhibited. In each of these districts there is one port of entry and one or more ports of delivery, according to the existing course and interests of commerce and trade, and the facilities of collecting and securing the public revenue.

A general provision is now proposed to invest by law the Secretary of the Treasury with the power, with the approbation of the President, to dispense with any ports of entry when in their judgment they shall become unnecessary as ports of entry, and attach them, as ports of delivery, to other districts; to establish new ports of delivery in any of the districts, and to establish in any territory acquired or in possession of the United States new ports of entry and delivery, and designate the boundaries of the collection districts thus established, and to decide finally any dispute as to the actual boundary line of any district established by the act. The revenue and penal laws of the United States are to extend at once over the districts so established.

The second chapter relates "to the appointment of officers for the collection of the customs, and to provide for their compensation."

This chapter continues the several descriptions of revenue officers as established by existing laws, viz: collectors, naval officers, surveyors, appraisers, weighers, measurers, gaugers, and inspectors, designating,

however, chief revenue officer at ports of delivery where duties are paid as collector, and at other ports of delivery as deputy collector. Those officers are now known as surveyors.

The collection districts are arranged (with the exceptions hereafter stated) into eight classes, according to the amount of revenue collected in each; and the description of officers employed and the compensation allowed are, as a general thing, predicated upon this fact. The amount of revenue collected was assumed as the best general criterion of the actual amount of business, labor, and responsibility involved, and to meet exceptions (as in the merely or mainly preventive service) additional compensation is allowed.

The collection district of New York and the collection districts in Texas, California, and Washington and Oregon Territories, are organized separately. In consideration of the very large amount of revenue collected at New York, and the peculiar condition of the other districts referred to, they could not be properly brought within the proposed classification.

The remaining districts and ports of delivery are arranged into eight classes

First class. Where the revenue collected shall exceed one million of dollars per annum.

Second class. Where the amount collected is five hundred thousand dollars and not exceeding one million.

Third class. Where the amount collected is one hundred thosand dollars and not exceeding five hundred thousand.

Fourth class. Where the amount collected is fifty thousand and not exceeding one hundred thousand dollars of revenue.

Fifth class. Where the amount collected is twenty thousand and not exceeding fifty thousand dollars.

Sixth class. Where the amount collected is ten thousand and not exceeding twenty thousand dollars.

Seventh class. Where the amount collected is one thousand and not exceeding ten thousand dollars; and the

Eighth class. Where the amount collected is less than one thousand dollars annually.

It is made the duty of the Secretary, with the approval of the President, to transfer, annually, districts from one class to another according to the revenue collected, to designate the class to which new districts and ports of delivery shall be assigned until their proper classes shall be ascertained from the revenue collected, and to annex any of the districts, not included in any of the classes, to its proper class. For each of the districts, classified or unclassified, this chapter provides for the appointment by the President and Senate, for the term of four years of a collector, naval officer, surveyor and appraiser, or for one or more of them, as the business of the port may require, as is the case under the present law; and the Secretary of the Treasury is also authorized to abolish, with the approval of the President, any one or more of said offices, and require the duties to be performed by the remaining officer or officers at said port. It also provides for the discharge of the duties of the several collectors, naval officers, surveyors, and appraisers, during the vacancies occasioned by lapse of time, resignation, or re