The Sun.
London, England, 1851-02-11 00:00:00

pound weight of -the merchandize which had come into
their possession, or had in any way knoWingly defrauded or
deprived st'single merchant of one shilling's worth of his
property, he would consent at once to a verdict [wing passed
against him upon this as well as upon the other 67 iufoi ma-
tions which the Board of Customs had thought proper to tile
against the London Dock Company. But let him ask where
there was any evidence, out of the vast mass which the jury
had heard during the last three days—now nearly four days
—which went in the least to establish or to prove thecharge
which had been set up against his clients? That being so,
then, he would here throw back, with the fullest contempt
and with indignation, the base accusations which had been
preferred against the London Dock Company, upon those
who had instructed his Learned Friend on the other side.
Unhesitatingly, too, did he declare that these informations
were as disgraceful to those who had got- them up as were
the charges untrue. The charges which his Learned Friend
the Solicitor-General had made and insinuated he repelled
with scorn and indignation. The imputations were false
from their beginning to their ending, and he threw those im-
putations back upon those who had cast them upon the
London Dock Company in so unscrupulous and so dis-
graceful a manner. He begged to be distinctly under-
stood as not looking these or any other of his obser-
vations in reference to -his Learned Friend, Lecause he
took it for granted that his Learned Friend ii id only ash d
upsti his instructions. He repeated again, then, that these
proceedings from their commencement to their ending were
utterly disgraceful to those by whom they had been get up
and carried on, and he at the same time wholly acquitted Lie
lion. and Learned Friend of haying been actuated by lei-
worthy motives in his address on behalf of the Crown. But
his Learned Friend had made these imputations in a public
court of ju-tice— he might say he had made them to the
world at lar.ze - not merely to that court, not merely to the
Lord Chief Baron, nut merely to the jury, not merely to
Europe—bat he had made them to the world at large, be-
cause they all knew that what occurred in that court found
its way to all parts of the civilized glebe. His Learned
Friend, then, bad made these charges in hearing of the whole
world, against a company of mercantile gentlemen, without
one single tittle of evidence to substantiate the accusations.
The charges had not only not been supported, but they
could nut be substantiated. His Learned Friend had told the
jury, among other things, that the London Dock Company
had been in the habit of giving a bonus to such of their
officers as were employed in those departments of the esta-
blishment where the " sweepings" were carried on, and that
those of their servants who were the most successful in the
collection of those " sweeping " were the persons who
were made the objects of the largest rewards. Let him ask,
had there been one syllable or one word of evidence given
in reference to this part of the accusations? Had there been
one word of proof in respect to this base and odious at-
tempt at blackening the characters of the gentlemen whom
he had the honour to represent on the present occasion—a
body of gentlemen whose integrity was as pure and un-
blemished as that of any portion of the community? What
right had the Board of Customs, who were themselves the
trustees of the public, to expend the money of that public
by the institution of proceedings like the present, when they
had not one particle of evidence to support their odious and
base calumny? The Board of Customs well knew what was
the nature of the gratuities which had been given by the
London Dock Company to their servants, because the whole
proceeding had been fully explained to the board by the
company—that explanation being, that the company had
been accustomed to make a triennial distribution of rewards
to the superior order of officers on account of "superior dili-
gence " and for " over work " which was actually per-
formed by any of the officers. Not the most remote refer-
ence had these rewards to the "sweepings," while upwards
of two-thirds of the gratuities were bestowed upon officers
whose duties were in no way connected with the collection
of " sweepings." After the London Dock Company had
furnished these explanations to the Board of Customs,
the latter wrote back to the company, stating that not the
slightest imputation attached to that body on account of the
distribution of the gratuities in question ; and yet, notwith-
standing this communication, exculpating them as it were
from all blame upon the subject, his Learned Friend had been
instructed to come into that court and trump up a repetition
of so odious and so base an accusation. Such a proceeding,
he might say, was totally without precedent, especially, tco,
where the Board of Customs bad been unable to adduce any evi-
dence to establish their charges. The London Dock Company,
after an existence of upwards of fifty years, now found them-
selves dragged into a public court to defend a series of infor-
mations based upon testimony which he would presently
show was at once the most discreditable as well as the most
fallacious. If the Customs or the Crown had confined them-
selves to offering evidence as to the question arising upon
the 28 casks of sugar and the 50 or 55 packages of cocoa,
which constituted the subject of the first information, he
could have shown long ago, with regard to 20 of these
casks, that they had been lying in the docks waiting for the
visit of the Custom-house officer to pass them for exportation.
With respect, also, to the cocoa, it was in his power to show
that it was utterly impossible for the London Dock Company
to convert it to their own use, or even to defraud the revenue
of one single shilling of the duty on account of that cocoa;,
unless, indeed, it had been the intention of the company to
smuggle it out of the docks and to dispose of it for home
consumption. As the case for the London Dock Company
Froceeded, the jury and his Lordship, ay, and his Learned
riend too, would find from the evidence he should adduce,
that the cocoa seized had been in course of collection for
many years—that it was made up of " sweepings," and
stray bags which had not been claimed and could not be ac-
counted tor, and, moreover, that the whole would have come
into the Customs' account and then been exported in the
usual manner. It was perfectly absurd to say that the mer-
chants of London could have been defrauded of the amount,
seeing that during the half century since the establishment
of the London Docks not one single complaint of any de-
scription had ever been advanced against that great com-
pany, and that on the contrary they had throughout car-
ried on their business in the most perfect harmony with the
Government and the revenue, and also to the universal
satisfaction of the mercantile community at large. He felt
no hesitation in admitting that if one fortieth part of the
allegations which had been set up against the London Dock
Company by his Learned Friend the Solicitor-General could
have been substantiated, the board of directors of that com-
pany would be deserving of expulsion from all society. They
would in that case have deserved to have been driven
out from all society with the brand of shame and disgrace
placed upon their brows. But he was in a position to show
that there was not one atom of truth in any of the accusa-
tions which had been brought forward against the com-
pany; and that, on the contrary, every one of the 24 gen-
tlemen who represented the interests of the Dock Company
was a man of honour, integrity, and honesty—persons who,
of all men of the world, would have revolted from any
idea of evading or attempting to evade the payment of one
farthing of the duty which the revenue was entitled to de-
mand, or of abstracting cue single pound of merchandize
from the trader and merchant. The Dock Company were
accused of having defrauded the merchant of the sugar
which might have remained in the ship or had escaped
from the packages; and they were also charged with the
still graver offence of carrying on a systematic felony by
the abstraction of original packages of' merchandize.
Why, if this were so, the London Dock Company was
neither more nor less than a band of felons, associated
together for the express purpose of plundering the mercan-
tile community at large. Probably the jury were not aware
that the greater proportion of the shareholders in the
London Dock Company were some of the most extensive
merchants in the land—some of the largest mercantile pro-
prietors in the empire; and if the imputations and accusa-
tions which had been advanced by his Learned Friend the
Solicitor-General were true, 20 out of the 24 directors of the
company would lose, by several thousands per annum, a
larger sum than they could by any possibility derive from
their dividends as shareholders, swollen as their funds were
said to have been by these alleged peculations. Would it
not, then, be a national shame, as well as a national misfor-
tune, that a number of gentlemen, who imported no less than
25,000,0001. worth of merchandise yearly, could be parties to
a base and contemptible fraud upon their fellow-merchants?
But he was in a position to prove that the amount derivable
from the "sweepings" would not afford to the shareholders
one additional penny to their dividends. Was it, then, to be
supposed that for such a consideration the directors of this
ancient company would connive at a system of plunder and
fraud, the effect of which must, in the common order
of things, be that they themselves, as the largest importers,
would be the largest sufferers? He could not but feel that
it was almost disrespectful on his part towards the jury
to dwell so long upon the supposition that the directors of the
London Dock Company could so far betray the hitherto un-
bounded confidence which the company had had reposed in
it from the day of its formation until the imputations about
which they were at that moment inquiring. Witnesses, how-
ever, had been called, who had with so much shamelessness
sworn that the custom had been for the company, by its ser-
vants, to plunder the merchants of an enormous quantity of
good marketable sugar in each year. He was not going to
shrink from meeting every one of the charges which his
Learned Friend had brought against the Dock Company, for.
on the contrary, he would prove beyond the possibility of
doubt that each charge was founded on fabrication and posi-
tive.falsehood; and while he should 'not in' the conduct of
his cause shrink from meeting every point of accusation, his
clients did shrink with feelings of horror at the supposition
that any persons could believe that they had been guilty of
the nefarious and fraudulent conduct which: was imputed to
them by the Crown. He besought the jury to bear in mind
the class of witnesses who had been brought forward to
support the information on the part of the Crown.
What had some of these witnesses proved ? Why,
that there was a regular system of felony being
carried on in the London Docks, which a- few years
since would have been punishable by death. Then nearly
all of the witnesses had been betraying the company, even
supposing their statements were true—which he in the most
unqualified terms denied—while they had been eating the
bread of the Dock Company. The Learned Counsel then
commented with much severity upon the evidence given by
several of these witnesses, and then took a general review
of the case which had been made out on the part of the
Crown—the whole of which he designated as a gross and
wilfully base fabrication. He took his stand to the case
made, out by his Learned Friend on behalf of the Crown
by stating that that case was a tissue of fabrications and
falsehood. That that was so he should bring forward a
mass-of evidence of so clear and distinct a character that it
would be impossible for any man to resist its convincing and
satisfactory effect. The Board of Customs had been offered an
inspection of the books of the Dock Company, and free access
to every corner of the premises, which the communication
had gone on to state were at all times open to the revenue
officers. The Learned Counsel then entered into an outline
of the evidence which it would be his duty to call, and coin•
plained in bitter terms of the way in which the Crown ,had
conducted its case, and of its having withheld every infer
-
oration from the Dock Company which could haveaspisi_
0173,
them in the preparation of their defence; and, in. c'
interference
called on the jury to discountenance such
an
the London
with the proceedings of such a company
a 9, was
sashe contended
Dock Company, unless it could be proved, that their acts
it had not been proved in the presenlm.ivediscae,
interference.'
were such as to justify any such
The Learned Gentleman sat down
the at the conclusion of a
:partial plaudits from
speech of six hours' duration amid ,
d
an over-crowded court.
The further proceedings were then a. adjourned at half-past
six o'clock to till-morrow (this) morning.

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VINTRY WARD CHARITY SCHOOLS.--Yesterday
morning the Lord Mayor, the sheriffs, under-sheriffs, and the
members of the Court of Common Council, went in their state
carriages to the church of St. James, Garlick-hythe, Garlick-
hill, Upper Thames-street. where a sermon was preached
hy the Reverend Edward Rice, D.D., head master of Christ's
Hospital, &c., in aid of the funds of the Vintry Ward charity
schools,