The Sun.
London, England, 1844-08-12 00:00:00

TILE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, AUGITST 12. 1844.

every mode of deceit, and every description
of falsehood." .The Commission were forced, " very
early in their inquiries, to feel a distrust of the in-
tegrity of the officers and of the efficiency of the
system. The previous high character and estima-
tion of an officer appeared to be no guarantee for his
honour and integrity." They had ample reason to
arrive at these conclusions. In turning their atten-
tion to the "Gauging Department and the system
pursued at the dock warehouses," they deemed it
highly probable, from some remarkable evidence
brought before them, that " the practice of serious
frauds in regard to spirits and wines" was
continued, and the admission (in a particu-
lar case detailed in their former report)
of cigars as marble, in St. Katherine's Docks,
" demonstrated that the revenue was liable to fraud
in the docks as elsewhere." To show the wholesale
character of the frauds so successfully practised—
with the aid of the Custom-house officers—on the
revenue, we will now briefly note a few instances.
JOHN WYCHERLEY (whose case we noticed on Mon
day) being on duty as a weigher on the Custom-
house-quay, in May, 1840, was employed under Mr.
LANG, a landing-waiter (since dismissed), in opening
the outward case of what was apparently an article
of furniture. On a landing-surveyor's coming up,
LANG told him there was nothing in the asserted
book-case ; but after his departure, the case was
opened in LANG'S presence, and iby his desire.
There were in it fifteen packages,—" sixteen or
eighteen inches in length, of proportionate
depth and breadth ; and they were subsequently
placed in five or six baskets with locks. WYCHERLEY,
who watched them until after office hours, feared to
seize them without orders from LANG, though he
suspected something wrong. On the following
morning they •had disappeared, and were never
brought to charge. It has been subsequently ad-
mitted by LANG himself, " that these goods were
clandestinely introduced with his aid on that occa-
sion, and Mr.SIDNEY HARRIS, his near connexion,
and then a landing-waiter, though now superseded,"
confirmed this statement.
Now, this middle state of condemnation,
this purgatory between the two extremes of un-
questioned tenure of office, and penal dis-
missal from it, we cannot understand. On
what principle do the Custom-house authorities pro-
ceed in such matters ? To us it appears a clear ques-
tion of "guilty or •not guilty," which they have to
determine with regard to such offenders. If the
offence be established against them, turn them off, at
least, finally and distinctly. If the offence be not
established, the accused parties ought not to be sub-
jected to the disgrace of suspension. At the end of
April last,
" Two men in the employ of Messrs. Hall, warehouse-
men on Custom-house Quay, gave information, on oath,
before the Surveyors-general, of numerous transactions
in which, with the aid of the officers, the revenue had
been defrauded for several years preceding. In conse-
quence of this, several officers were suspended early in
May, including Messrs. Sidney Harris and Grayson,
landing-waiters,.. the former in the receipt of a salary of
3501., the latter, of 250/. per annum. After being sus-
pended five or six weeks, withont admitting their guilt,
these last-mentioned officers, on the 13th of June, and
subsequently, fully 'Confessed it, and detailed, on oath, a
long series of fraudulent proceedings, in which they and
other officers had been concerned."
GRAYsois, it seems, lays on COTES, a landing-
waiter (one of the discharged), the having first
tempted him to pass goods improperly; but fully ad-
mitting his own culpability, he claims the merit
of " not having carried to a greater extent
his roguery." And with some reason, as the Com-
mission think, seeing that "from his peculiar situation,
and the confidence reposed in him by his superior
officers, there was little limit to the frauds which he
might have committed. It would appear, however,
from the declarations of one of the Messrs. HALL'S
men, that IN MANY HUNDRED INSTANCES packages
of goods were taken away without payment of duty,
and without knowledge of the officers." We must
refer the reader to the extracts from the " Report,"
which we shall publish, for the mystery of the enor-
mous frauds perpetrated by means of " dummies" as
they,are termed,—some of the packages from their
magnitude called " cottages," being as large as a
waggon could hold.

" Lace, gloves and silk were most frequently the con-
tents of the packages thus fraudulently introduced.
Broady, however, was done ;' and a joint-stock com-
pany was formed by:subscription, for the purpose of frau-
dulently importing tobacco from Rotterdam ; and three
h"gsheada, nt, the early part of 1841 (about 3,400 lbs.
weight), were passed as cheese, though they were
examined by a landing-surveyor, one or two rows of
cheese being placed at the top of the cask. The sub-
scribers to this project cleared about 501. each ; but the
undertaking was stopped, from the jealousy of other
traders, who found it might interfere with their own
illegal importations. But, ho adds, after this case, they
deemed their operations quite a certainty.' "
Clock faces, the duty upon which is 20 per cent. ad
valorem, were passed under entry at half the real num
bers in the packages or case, as 200, for instance,
instead of 1,000. FooTB, a landing-waiter, now
dismissed, is accused of having, while on duty at St.
Katherine's Docks, "purloined thousands of cigars,
distributing them amongst his friends, and amongst
the Custom-house officers, with great liberality."
Another delinquent got into the clutches of one of
the fraudulent traders thus :—A bacon dealer lent

GRAYSON 701., and having him thus in his power,
forthwith made arrangements with him for fraudulent
importations through his connivance. A person was
dispatched to Hamburgh, who sent over a large
quantity of the drug, coculus indicus, in 49 packages,
purporting to be, all of them, flax. In reality seven
only were flax ; and all were successfully passed as
flax, at the duty of ld. per cwt. on flax,
instead of 2s. '6d. per lb. on the coculus
indicus. The loss to the revenue by this little ope-
ration was .529 t— In 1841, barrels of snuff were
passed by GRAYSON and FOOTE, in league, as barrels
of pork. The loss to the revenue may be inferred
from the fact that these two worthies received 1201.
between them from the importers—men, doubtless,
claiming for themselves the character of "highly re-
spectable" tradesmen. But FOOTE, and B waxy (another
landing-waiter), are said to have netted by a few similar
operations, in part of 1842, in warehouses and on
quays on the north side of the river, between 5001. and
1,000/. In most of these cases it was pretty certain
that if the packages had been tested by the " spit,"
the fraud would have been detected. But the
Austrian
.sentinel, in Tekeli, does not more
carefully abstain from thrusting his bayonet
into the miller's sack which contains the melo-dra-
matic hero, than the " weighers " seem to have
eschewed the notion of passing the spit into bales
end packages belonging to their friends. HARRIS,
another officer, admits to have accomplished in six
or eight months of •1840, frauds on the revenue to the
amount of 5001., by passing wines and spirits either
short or under improper descriptions of quality—
tobacco as marble, and silk as specimens of natural
history (!) He received for his own services 801.,
and was enabled to carry on this system of deception
through the remissness of the landing surveyors ; for
in three months he was not visited by one of these
functionaries more than twice I In 1841 and 1842 this
same adroit gentleman "passed improperly to a large
amount, and for ample remuneration, stained paper,
damask curtains, silks, and wines, either by aid of the
rough book system, or by omission of entry of small
boxes, either large ones or by short entries, or by
omitting any examination whatever," of the packages
passed.

Here, for the present, we once more pause ; much
marvelling what the system can have been,—how
worked and looked after by local and other subordi-
nates,—how checked, controlled, or investigated by
the superior authorities, under whose general juris-
diction it has been placed—which could be thus
easily, perpetually, impudently, and notoriously per-
verted to the robbery and spoliation of that revenue,
which its multiferious and very expensive machinery
was devised to protect and extend.

The Journal of the Two Sicilies of the 27th ult.
publishes the second judgment of the military court,
sitting at Cocenza, was pronounced on the 24th. This
sentence includes the foreign refugees who embarked
in Calabria on the 16th of June last. Seventeen have
been condemned to death. The KING ordered the
sentence to be put in execution regarding the most
guilty parties; consequently nine were executed on
the 28th. The following are the names :—Don AT-
TALIO BANDBXRA, D. EMILIA BANDEIRA, D. NICOLA.
RICCIOTTI, D. ANACARSI NARDI, D. DOMENICO
MoRO, GIOVANNI—ITENERUCCI, GIACOMO ROCCA,
FRANCESCO BARTi, DOMENICO LUPATELLI."

Fifteen executions have now taken place on ac-
count of the Calibrian revolt, several of whom be-