The Sun.
London, England, 1865-05-08 00:00:00

LAW INTELLIGENCE—(This Day).

COURT OP BANKRUPTCY.
(Before Mr. Registrar Brougham.)
IN RE ROBESON.-ACTION AGAINST RAILWAY COMPANIES.
This bankrupt was described as of Bromley, Kent,
shorthand writer, and to-day was appointed for a dividend
meeting. The debts are £790, and the causes of the bank-
ruptcy are stated to be insufficiency and sudden falling off
of income, severe family and personal illness, and an un-
successful action for compensation for injuries received on
the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway. The
amount of the dividend will be advertised in a few days.

IN RE CURGEYSON.--BILLS IN TILE ARMY.
This bankrupt is described as a captain in her Majesty's
Military Train, at Woolwich, and to-day was appointed
for the first meeting, The bankrupt ascribes his failure
to " being unable to meet his bill engagements on account
of the high rate of interest that he had been charged for
discounting such bills, and accumulation thereon."
Amongst the creditors are Mr. Morris, of Carlton-chambers,
£550, and Julius Calisher, of Jermyn-street, about £2,151,
secured to the full amount by an assignment of bankrupt's
commission, valued at £2,500, and a life policy for £l,OOO.
Debt the amount of nearly £4,500, including the above, aro
on the file.

(Before Mr. Commissioner Holroyd.)
A NEW NAME.-IN RE THE HEMATITE CO,

An application in the matter of this company was heard
in private-this morning. The name has attracted conside-
rable attention, but the meaning is somewhat mysterious.
The company itself is a mining corporation.
(Before Mr. Commissioner Goulburn.)
IN RE OLADSTONE.-REAVY FAILURE.

This matter, which has been before the court very often
recently, again came oia to-day. The debts are very heavy,
and the matter was once more adjourned for further

accounts.

SPORTING NOTES.

Owing to the pressure on our columns, the letter of
" A Freshman" is unavoidably postponed until to-morrow.

TATTERSALLS'—SeruRDA.r.

CHESTER CUP.
3to 1 agst Helen (taken)
sto 1 agst Ackworth (offered)
11 to 1 agst Victorious (offered)
12 to 1 agst Lion (taken)
100 to 8 agst Highflyer's dam colt (taken)
100 to 7 agst La Toucques (taken)
20 to 1 agst Gratitude (taken)
33 to 1 agst Buckfoot (taken)
50 to 1 agst Soumise (taken)
50 to 1 agst Balham (taken)
66 to 1 agst The Brewer (taken)

THE DERBY.
7to 1 agst Gladiateur (taken)
Bto 1 agst The Duke (taken and offered)
9to 1 agst Archimedes (offered)
10 to 1 agst Breadalbane (taken)
20 to 1 agst Oppressor (taken)
25 to 1 agst Christmas Carol (taken)
66 to 1 agst Olmar (taken)
1000 to 30 Brahma and Audax coupled (taken)

• ,
LADVERTISEMENT.I
" TAT TERSALLS' TlSSUE."—Commission Agency.
—James Hopkins executes Commissions on all Races
throughout the year. Place-betting and double eTents.
Cheques to be crossed National Bank, and Post-office orders
payable at the Fleet-street office. Address, 13, &ills-
buildings, Fetter-lane, London, E.C.

Amalgamation of the Customs and Excise.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE 8172.7.

Sni,—The true and, indeed, only remedy, having a due
regard to the interests of the, public, for the grievances
which the Custom-house clerks with so much justice com-
plain of in their petitions to the Board of Customs and
the House of Com Mons, is to be found in the amal-
gamation of similar and analogous offices in the Customs
and Excise, as well as in that also of cognate offices at
the West-end. I say " only remedy," for it is in this way
alone that the absolute cost of the public establishments
can be kept within its present limits ; while the pay of
those who really do the work, the bees of the hive, may
be raised to a fair and legitimate standard.
It is by the abolition of highly paid offices in the amalga-
mation of two or more departments that the salaries of the
subordinates can alone be increased without entailing upon
the public any additional burden to that which they already
havA to hoar. I need not add that herein I allude to the
Controlling, Treasury, and legal departmentsuf tho l uotomq
and the Excise, and the statistical department of the
Customs, technically known as the Office of the Inspector-
General of Imports and Exports and the Board of Trade.
The absurdity of the present division and dispersion of
the statistical department of the country, part being at the
Board of Trade, part at the Customs, and part at the
Excise could only be equalled by breaking up the audit-
office at Somerset House and constituting a separate audit
department at the Treasury, Bank of England, Customs,
and Excise, and every Government establishment whose
accounts the present Audit-office examines.
_ _

I do not believe that there is any real practical difficulty
attendant upon the amalgamations suggested which could
not be readily overcome. One would, of course, be pre-
pared to bear that from time immemorial the Customs and
Excise have formed two independent departments, having
their own 'offices and.their own commissioners. This is
the minor and, though sentimental, by no means
the minimum difficulty. The major one being, of
course, the sweeping away such comfortable berths as those
of commissionerships and secretaryships, in which sons-in-
law, brothers-in-law, and the numerous connexions in-
volved in the word " nepotism" are comfortably provided
for at the public expense. This latter difficulty is the one
which will require the greatest amount of public pressure
to overcome ; the former argument, that they have existed
so long, and, therefore, ought to be respected and perpe-
tuated, in these days of steam and the electric telegraph is
more easily overborne than it had used to be.

Boards, it is notorious, have no souls to be saved or bodies
to be kicked, and the Board of Customs is no exception to
this rule, either in its spiritual or corporeal nature. The
Customs' Board, also, like all its fellows, can only be got into
motion by severe as well as by long sustained pressure ;
and, if, being once moved, it is to be kept moving, them
must be no rekxation in the pressure or entire wakefulness
and watchfulness of the public as to everything bearing
the slightest resemblance to' that foe of all improvement,
retrogression.

Where, then, except in the vis inertia of the Customs
authorities, I ask, is the difficulty of one office controlling
the receipts and expenditure of both Customs and Excise ?
Where the difficulty of one legal department protecting
both the Inland and Customs Revenues ? When the diffi.
culty of one great " statistical department," collecting,
classifying, and publishing the accounts of imports and ex.
ports and the statistics of the country ?

It is idle to say that there is any difficulty ! It only re.
quires the employment of new and young blood for the
difficulty, if difficulty it can be called, to bo grappled with
and overcome. And heroin, to be candid, the solution of
the matter must bo sought. At the head of the Customs
establishment is a man respectable not alone for his admi-,
nistrative abilities, as shown in his past management of
that great department of the Revenue, but also from his
antecedents. I need not remind you that he was a Minister
and respected colleague of the late Sir Robert Peel. But I
say it with every respect for the talents of Sir Thomas
Fremantle that he is the great stumbling-block in the way
of the reforms so much needed in his establishment. His
very reputation assists him in his obstructiveness. For
that which would be treated with no consideration from a
man with less antecedents is deferentially listened to when
enunciated by the present Chairman of the Customs.
There is no denying it, ho has outlived—l say it with no
disrespect—his time. He has been left high and dry on
the strand of tradition and red-tape, and is perpetually
striving to stop the leaks in the ship with Treasury puddle.
It is well known that in his evidence before Mr. Horsfall's
committee he resisted every approximation to any amalga-
mation between the Customs and Excise. It is equally
notorious that in his opposition to the petitions of the
clerks for increased emoluments ho stands alone; but as
chairman he overrules the voices and opinions of the more
liberal and enlightened commissioners. It is alike well
known that the Treasury has of late disregarded--a most
unusual thing—the decisions of the Board. After the
clerks in one department had petitioned the Board in vain
for some improvement in their paltry classification, upon
appeal to the Treasury the Board's decision was set aside
and the petition of the clerks acceded to.

This, 1 need not say, is a complete-bouleversement of
the usual order of things. It is always the course of the
Treasury to restrain the several Boards in their applica-
tions for increase of staff, or increase of emolument ; and,
perhaps, no more powerful argument could be adduced by
the Custom-house clerks in their behalf than the statement
of this fact. For the Treasury must, indeed, be aware of
the justice of the case, and the solid ground upon which
the petitioners rest their demand, when it adniinisters such
a rebuke to the impecuniosity and niggardliness of the
Board of Customs.—l am, sir, your obedient servant,
stb. May, 1865. ►STATIST.

The Marchioness of Salisbury will arrive in town
to-day, from visiting the Earl and Countess Delawarr at
Knowle, the ancient seat of the Sackvilles, in Kent. The
noble marquis is doing duty with his regiment, the South
Herts Militia, at Hertford.

The Earl and Countess de Grey entertained a
select party at dinner on Saturday last at their residence in
Carlton-gardens.

The Earl Spencer was to leave Spencer House, St.
James's, this morning, to accompany his R val Highness
the Prince of Wales to Dublin. _ _

The Earl Russell will give a grand full-dress
banquet on the 24th inst., in celebration of her Majesty's
birthday, to the whole of the foreign Ambassadors and
Ministers, as well as the principal diplomatic servants of
the Crown at the time in London.
The Earl of Sefton and the gentlemen who accom-
panied him in his mission to present the Order of the Gart©r
to his Majesty the King of Portugal are expected to arrive
The Countess Powis and Ladies Herbert have
at home this evening or
or to-m orrow.
arrived at the family mansion in Berkeley-square from
Walcott House for the season.

Viscount and Viscountess Palmerston arrived at
Cambridge House on Saturday from Brockett Hall, Herts.
THE DUKE DIIARCOURT died in Paris on Wed-
nesday. He was born in 1786, and would have
completed, on the 22d August next, his 79th year. Th
Duke belonged to the old French noblesse. He was a mem-
ber of the Chamber of Deputies from 1827 to 1837, and was
ambassador to Spain in 1830. Ho was advanced to the
House of Peers in 1838. On the death of his elder brother
in 1840 he succeeded to the ducal title. He was ambassa-
dor to Rome when Count Rossi was assassinated, and it
was to him that the Pope expressed in private his wish to
take refuge in France after that deplorable event, though
there was no mention of the fact in the duke's public de-
spatches. For some years past the duke was president of
the Polish committee in Paris. He was liberal in politics,
esteemed in private life, and regretted by all who had the
advantage of his acquaintance.
PROPERTY IN THE CITY OF LONDON.—On Satur-
day, at the Lord Mayor's Court, a compensation case,
" Balemont v. The London, Chatham, and Dover Railway,"
occupied several hours. The claim was £26,000, for pro-
perty in New Bridge-street, near Earl-street, which had
been taken by the company. Property had greatly in-
creased in value in the City of London. After a lengthened
Bovin
investigation a sum of £17,500 was agreed up ,
Afton
.
Q.C., Mr. Gwilt, and Mr. Tamer were for the .claimant ; Mr.
T
Lloyd and Mr. Horace Lloyd for the company. Tie case
was heard before the Recorder and a special jury.
A WHIMSICAL FRENCH JEST !—Considerable
merriment has been occasioned in French literary circles
by the publication in Paris of a squib entitled " The
tort' of Napoleon ~ y
I b Julius Ccesar,"