The Sun.
London, England, 1844-05-22 00:00:00

::_lenge.s! and. to the general condition as regards educa-
"o , isarnin
and reliio r.)f the Universities of Ox- CUSTOM HOUSE FRAUDS,
foford and Catut'bridge,, arid their colleges, espeially with It is a growing fashion, we believe, of late years
Mission all
rd
to all maters herein brought brfore your among our medical practitioners, to discourage the
Mission efficientul;e;owpieihrfofruilnl power to etighle such Coral- practice of bleeding. This once popular treatment is
ti7lopi;_ea•rtsa,nezt
Vic.
And your I": now, so to speak, abandoned, except in extreme cases
I of topical inflammation, whether produced by external
violence, or inward disorganization, or an habitual
tendency of the blood to congestion. But the two
Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, with the Hall
of Apothecaries, to boot, may settle what canons of
doctrine they please, in full " senatus " assembled,
with all the revived solemnities of Mr. PETER
13ORTHWICK'S threatened convocation of another
learned profession ; there is, we tell them, one patient
in the world, the most important on their books, too,
who WILL be blooded ! This is no other than the
portly JOHN BULL himself. lie will always insist on
his customary indulgence of a little phlebotomy, as
hi; more southern friends of Italy or Spain demand,
after noontide, the luxury of their habitual siesta.
Only, in Mr. BuLes case, the practitioner must take
care that he " breathe a vein," not in the patient's
arm, but in the breeches pocket. It has long been
imagined, and that burly patient is brought at last to
be of the opinion himself, that he is in incessant
danger from plethoric repletion in that region. In
1825-6, one of his political doctors (then Rommosi,
now RIPON), announced to the world that this
interesting personage was so excessively full of
political health (i. e. money), that the only
reasonable cause for apprehension about him
arose from this redundancy ; that it was the pecu-
liarity of his (civil) constitution to " form " fresh
capital, as fast as he got rid of that which was in him.
All Europe was astounded at this phenomenon of an
uninzpoverishable capitalist ; and France sent over
some of her distinguished savans (the Baron CHARLES
Durtst among the number) to contemplate and report
upon whatever might be most notable in the physio-
logy and aspect of a gentleman subject to so capri-
cious and diffusive a malady. To be sure there was
no end of " visiting" physicians then ! From all
parts of the Old World and of the New, he was pre-
scribed for—bled, depleted, ransacked, rummaged,
blistered—almost done for. It was very near prov-
ing one of those cases in which people are " killed
with kindness." They would not leave him ;—they
would not let him look, even, into his own case, or
worry himself with over-scrupulous inquiries into
theirs. By the application of a foreign electuary,
called indifferently " Loans" and "Mining Ven-
tures," they soon expelled from him two-thirds, as
it was thought, of his whole bulk in superabundant
capital. Then, home-reared leeches, in the shape of
Joint-Stock and Bubble Company shares, were
plentifully applied ; and at last the patient, fearful of
sinking under so many and such violent remedies,
from Mexico, and Guatemala, and Madrid—Lisbon
and Berlin St. Petersburgh and Rio Janeiro
Bogota da Fe and Amsterdam —to say no-
thing of the nausea occasioned by endless
nostrums of asphaltum, caoutchouc, corrosive sub-
limate, and all the modern ingredients of
our street pavements, and roadways, and anti-rot me-
dicated woodwork ; the patient, we say, became fear-
fully exasperated. Some of his advisers he kicked
down stairs ; others he crushed to death, by once
touching them; and, it is difficult to say where the
mischief of this re-action, on his part, would have.
ended, had it not occurred to Dr. PEEL and his friends
to dose him with their new currency drug, and gold
pill. These immediately paralysed his faculties and
prostrated his strength to a degree which brought on
a " crisis," still remembered as " THE" panic. Yet
the strength of JOHN BULL'S constitution (or pockets)
has triumphed over all these trials and disasters ; and,
with ordinary fair play—a little more vigilance in his
superior, and a little more honesty in his subordinate
servants—it might yet do so. But he is, unhappily,
still persuaded, in the first place, to endure the con-
stant exhibition of Dr. PEEL'S Digitalis, or " Gold-
touch ;" which, given on the pretext of keeping him
free from over excitement, and keeping down the
buoyancy of his action, is slowly, but certainly, like
the narcotic poison of " BELLADONNA," sapping his
vital powers, and predisposing them to decay. In the
second place he is still practised upon by those who
profusely •" bleed" him—while he sleeps. These
" practitioners," the most clandestine of their order,
are they who concoct " Custom-house frauds." The
secret of these processes has been, hiaterto, but par-
tially discovered; and no system of watching, so
efficient as to ensure the detection of such intruders,
and prevent them from further exhausting their victim
during his slumbers, has yet been devised. The first of
these mischiefs we have already, on former occasions,
minutely described. The second, we are reminded of,
by a paragraph in a newspaper of Sunday last which,
without probably intending to do so, demonstrates
very clearly how little of beneficial , result can be
looked for from the means now in course of adoption
for the prevention of future malpractices of the de-
scription alluded to.
It appears that the Commissioners of Customs
suppose themselves to be now wide awake !
They are not going to slumber over frauds,
and collusions, and peculations, by which, if
we may judge from the jump which the Customs
duties have taken, within the year since the cry of
" thieves " has been hotly kept up at the great house
in Thames-street,—the pockets of poor Mr. Bum. have
been drained of from 1,000,000/. to 2,000,000/. per
annum, instead of the 480,0001., or other modest
sum, which, a little while since, the Commissioners
Congratulated the public on being at any rate the
" be-all and the " of the nefarious robberies
that had then been " blown upon." No. The Commis-
sioners, " with the approval of the Treasury," have
created two new officers with " a new style and
title !" (Prodigious invention, and rare guarantee!)
These are " Inspectors-General of the waterside and
warehousing departments." To the number of landing
surveyors who have been so negligent heretofore, are
to be added three colleagues (on the principle that
JOHN, having confessed to " doing nothing ;"
ToM, in answer to his master's inquiry
what he was about, reported himself to be
" helping Joust"). The six classes of landing
waiters to remain as before. Why ? Because of the
culpable dereliction of duty traced to their depart-
ment, in the so-called investigations already insti-
tuted. But now comes the flower of what our Sun-
day Contemporary quaintly calls this "scheme." Sixty
new officers, " subordinate to, and under orders of
the landing waiters, but superior to the lockers and
weighers," are to be chosen by the Commissioners.
There may be something very touching and magni-
ficent in this nicely-balanced gradation of ranks from
the oligarchy of the Board itself—(Magnates as they
are), through the successive gradations of an aristo-
cracy'of surveyors, receivers for western ports, and in-
spectors-general to a gentry of landing waiters, a com-
monalty of " superintendents of locks and ware-
houses," and working classes of lockers, weighers,
and porters. But it is more to our purpose to be
told, from what body these " superintendents of locks"
—whose loftier state than the " lockers" them-
selves is thus carefully noted—are to be selected. And
we find they are to be taken " from the most expe-
rienced " of the old hands in this class. This is rather
ambiguous. The only "experience" of which the
public have had any remarkable evidence is con-
nected with those who must have knowingly lent
their important, though subordinate, aid to the
fraudulent entries, weighings, exchanges, and re-
movals of packages, and to the falsification of books,
whereby the revenue has been plundered to an ex-
. tentistill utterly unfathomed ; and certain houses, of
more than equivocal reputation and enormous wealth,
have realised those sudden and colossal fortunes,
which enable them almost to brave and challenge ex-
posure on the one hand, with as little hesitation as
they pay down the pecuniary penalty accruing on
such occasional detection on the other. The truth is,
the whole "scheme," which we published recently
in The Sun, is an absurdly inadequate and puerile
contrivance to avert such delinquencies, as the already
ascertained frauds, in future. The great evil must be
either in the defective organization of the whole ma-
chinery of this important fiscal department, or in the
positive incompetency of the Board at its head for
their most responsible duties. The cutting down 183
lockers to 120, and 220 weighers to 180 ; the new
appointment of two inspectors-general, and the
addition of three landing surveyors, and the creation
of sixty superintendents of "locks"—were these last
even all of the family of Mr. Cucua himself—will
do no more to guarantee the Customs' revenue from
future spoliation, in the absence of a more intelligent,
vigorous, and prompt controlling authority, than the
addition of twenty-four new Directors to the staff of
the Bank of England would operate to put the cur-
rency,- under the present system, on a proper footing.
The Premier himself could not have devised a feebler
or a more delusive scheme of improved management
than these Commissioners have produced 1

THE CURRENCY AND FREE

TRADE.

'TIIE BANK CHAR'I'ER RESOLUTIONS.
rneeting was held last evening, at the Na-
tkeil Association Hall, Holborn, for the purpose of
taking into consideration the present plan of Sir It. Peel
,with' respect to the Bank Charter, and the Currency
f3ilibf. 1819, in connexion with free trade. The meet-
-43g. WAS not very numerously attended. The chair was
taken soon after eight o'clock.
The CHAIRMAN opened the business of the evening, by
statmg that he had been called on quite unexpectedly to
take the chair, in the absence of another gentleman, and
was not Prepared to go fully into the subject, the ex-
.,whPlanation of which he should leave to the gentlemen
o would move the resolutions. He was fully alive to
'lle great importance of the question, which was inter-
esting to all of them, and he might be permitted to say,
that unless they had a proper monetary system, free
ptrade would be as visionary a system as could be ima-
ned. Unless accompanied by a proper monetary sys-
'eel; free trade would only produce fur the country low
prices, low wages, and low profits.
.2" Mr. JONATIIAN DUNCAN proposed the first resolu-
°n:—" That under juq governreents and free institu-
eti°ne, all nations would find it their mutual interest to
xtrY out the principles of free trade to their utmost
extent. Prohibitive laws would be unknown, tariff's and
custom-houses would be as unnecessary for purposes of
tevenue
be raised direct) as of protection (so called). All taxes would
y from realised property; and, all inte-
rests ent.,;-•
J‘'.7lng the legitimate protection of equal laws,
tione
w°4'd
x need partial ones to bolster them up at the
eofpense of others. It is the natural, the undoubted right
wiZ°nS, AS of individuals, to administer to each other's
tohrefiertter:rstitdhistiPe.re°sPerity by the free interchange of
productions. Whatever tends to cramp
t.„. be
removed interehange is a positive evil, which ought
use its bestr;emaioalyathi,isbymeeting hereby pledges itself to
consistent
so owurtadeavours, collectively and individually, to
promote such
in-
terests f every available means, not in-
ehoeuuurtrr;s,pect for the laws, and for the in
'this ruesolution contained the general principle of free
trade,itio
e remarked on the necessity of a proper defi-
and phe terms used in treating of political economy,
r
trade_ oceeded to define what was the real nature of free
Sir R. Peel was a free trader in the e abstract"
:4'4r. Cobden and his friends were free traders in the
~ussellconcrete,.
while between them stood Lord John
traders haind te Whgs, who ere somemes free
Parties ni the concrete and in thew abstract. Two of these
ust be wrong, and, perhaps, all three of them.
rconsidered that they were all wrong, The doctrines
the
-.vagtie the most nearly approached to truth. As
its the League denounced the tax upon bread, he
entirely with it. But with respect to the duties
otll Stigar, he differed from them. The repeal of
0 e differential duties on sugar would be a compromise
I,n•abad principle, He totally denied, as a fundamental
I,',PneiPle, the right to levy indirect taxes for the purpose
starn getting a revenue. He could not understand how a
t„,,,
"'TY could be said to have a free trade when it kept
ea Custoin-house, an Excise-office, or a Stamp-office.
rr the purposes of revenue, all taxation ought to be
thee:t,s;lnd on property. He illustrated the injustice of
ti9_ end
of indirect taxation, by explaining the opera-
, !' of the
ii(!npreed hduty on tea, by which the low-priced tea
-y the poor was taxed 185 per cent., and the
cent, tea tea used by the rich was taxed only 75 per
tip n e did not understand a free trade joined with
eyerdirect taxation. If they once admitted the present
taadeem.t° he a good one, they might bid farewell to free
e explained at some length this view of the
ettrr-Ple. of free trade, Sot touching the question of the
resere•Y at all, which he left to speakers on the other
utions
•
tz„„ • nuousO sly seconded the resolution, which was carried
""l
c •• •
tie f APPS moved the second resolution, which was to
fu
effect ;
giro The meeting, nevertheless, acknowledges that
go 201 Unwise and unjust legislation, a country may be
atose""naturally circumstanced as to render free trade a
lten instead of a blessingovhile the unnatural circum-
nawee.:i l'eMain. It acknowledges Great Britain to be
!tee te..a4-4'e.d. in such circumstances. It acknowledges
publice to be incompatible with our present enormous
tlia,at,and private indebtedness, our enormous indirecth
Ltihiutig and other fixed charges, aggravated as those
cash
s
N 4." and charges have been by a return_ to
'nts at the end of the war, consummated by the
prian
which Act of 1819, commonly called Peel's Bill ;
the -4.6.notOriously augmented our burdens on
.011th
stand, and diminished our resources
'ellr; outer, to the extent of at least 50 per
Votur'salOst the productive and debtor-interests of the
rite
It acknowledges that, before the blessings of
e
181-I'4l:_ eau be realised in this country, the Act of
eatulust be repealed, and our monetary system placed
the e-oe: a feoting as shall at once lighten the burdens of
Qui—littY, relieve trade and industry from the shackles
(44 it told standard, render money and credit as abun-
Iktits4theY need to be, and by making both more
Atilt for ,for productive uses, ensure constant emplt?ny-
lrk toe people, with ample wages and reinuneralfi
tog
ttee.tr,;While this meeting, therefore, pledg!slitse
With, 'ne, it considers it would .be only to the
_end
Plea_nt willing the means, if it did not, at the same time,
l'eer itself to use every means to procure the repeal of.
koem"lirrency Act, and the establishmeniet
eosftaabnliismh:
ellt,,elonetary system conjointly with tl
t free-trade "
!us'rt°l't of the r'esolution he contended that free trade
4..1442,:,,,,L and rational in theory, but stated that was
th•„;'ur any country to barter away its productions
?tom; produce of other nations till the wants of
their
own
trad- Were fully satisfied. It' they confined th •
Were the sur 1 of their productions, after the people
p Us
Yoti„i'lY supplied with food and clothing, instead of de-
' Drop: it.to providing luxuries for the rich, it would be
• %eV; but at Present large numbers of ships left this
pie st",,,r):_,loaded with the very produce of' which the pet)-
, t,,xplac„"`2,in the greatest need. He then at some length
Pricey the action of the Bill of 1819 in reducing
Pa? tit°„nd Profits, while the people were compelled to
hotpt~same fixed amount of taxation and revenue, and
out the necessity of such an arrangement of the
Sip '7eY!)-s should enable the producers of goods to ob-
. er,(46l,l'ice for them from the consumers that would
‘,Ol, 'amount previously levied from them by the
eotaa,e-",nl,ent, in the shape of indirect taxation, on the
nittei;rity itself, or the raw material out of which it was
I,o,retured.
'4l ""ti seconded the resolution, stating that, with
free teed talk of
free trade, he never heard anything of a
!Pit.t rend! Ineney. Money was the great thing that
41tospep4",„ed, and till it was made cheap they could not
't„ktnetie-t.„,.-tie object of Peel's Bill was to limit the
olita;'" money, and this restriction made the struggle
14, In it, a general scramble.
V4110,1_ RoDOERs spoke on the resolution, for punr-.
d'lc'ving an amendment to it. He severe) con
co
tueititfe Bill of 1819, but was. equally
,against return-
,,Leved sYstern which that Bill superseded. He li,et
`nnstit "at, as the House of Commons was at pres,..nh
ttie to d, it would be useless to propose any such
Leal, and concluded by moving an amendment,
ttepro ilded into 'three parts, which designated all schemes of
takveer;.ct of the currency, emigration, &c.,,as mere.
and pledging the meeting to take no part in
'put ase !IrrencY and other squabbles, till the people were
Dteceutr'nssession of their old constitutional right of re•
Dir..gt_lwl according to the charter.
eeivee''',NE seconded the amendment, which was re-
. Tile:with great applause.
eotisteeta, wilder of the proceedings, was marked by
•e„assion-tele confusion, being half controversy half dm-
-"11 Which the Curren-Cy and the people's charter,
tei pal
ze(irluestion
d l rights, were all blended and
san po ICEtO
.:Poke .4 together. Mr. Webb and Mr. B. O'Brien
41er 14
favour of the resolutions, on the ground that
• intisa tW:re bou
nd to support those who were endeavour-
' ta4ociarin object that involved the improvement of
condition of the masses. The bulk of the
. ito
r, admen, Weyer, were decidedly in favour of
atnhe.
• 4 ;LI which'was carried by a great majorit a
"i-PinNeV(l7 'Of thanks to the Chairman, the meeting

Co

A IskqtrP
- Ml—, --NCES OF FRIGHTENING
put 'a 71.inistress, for some trifling offence,
The child
Iva, frentld into a dark cellar for an hour.
Upon return-
11e foolishlyßEN
tag InrettlY terrified, and cried bitterly.
~,alld );1; hp=
Parents in the evening she burrsptoihnetoeetlelaarrs.
klie gged that she might not be put into the her „Parents thought this extremely odd, and as..sureod.
. ao Ripeuet there was no danger of their being guilty. 1
At. On
' her, ktiaat all act of cruelty ~ but it was difficult to pacify
the i: w,lten put to bed she passed a restleshsienhi
she fre •
Tleuti -w'llg
.day she had fever, during
lin , exclaimed, "Do not put me
A tie
• e to fourth daytaken to Sir s y
ooper, i . she was . inw the. cellar 1"
(Plentl ' -11
. pe.4lll:lllo4lstlleeay the cellar."
whe,...Y...iti uttering, " Pray don't put
a high state of fever, with
.delirium, fre-
intqtred the
Zeta subjected. Irileortdeereillwfolhnuinedh
she
eat
had
e
Ilwrahrt emwarns nt 321101 ee
likely
Allot (lied in a week after this unfeeling conduct.
torelieveher
' .4..... er case from the same authority may here beo
~,r,.. _ It is
.the case of a child, ten years of age, who
anted to •
her slate
pencil write her exercise, and to scrape _
her
knife, ii went into the school in the dark to fetch
w, e
from behind
ti,
_, hen one of her schoolfellows burst
arid
he; ?nor M frighten her ; she was much terrified,;
ikod "ead ached. On the following da she became deaf
. ran the next, much tto hear the loudest
llcir, . ,so so as no
had
ha g. Sir Astley saw her three months after this h
be:fenced, and she continued in the same deplorable state
'au ,„• de d,
A boy fifteen years of age was admitted
fro7_4lllate of Dundee Lunatic Asylum, having become
~.wile from fright. When twelve years of ago he
w'tlt
.ilventeed to a light business ; and some trifling
: ,10e4 ueing one day missing, he was, along with others,
ala d up in a dark cellar. The children were much
ribed ; and all were let out, with the exception of this
r' boy, who was detained until past midnight. He
from this time nervous and melancholy, and
. 1;7, into a state of insensibility, from which he will
hiluer ,rceoler. The missing article was found on the
withwmg morning, exculpating the boy from the guilt
_x which he had been charged. Parents should be
tremety cautious not to allow their children to be
Metre uor terrified at all by unfeeling teachers. It has
re__ e found out that there is not the slightest occasion
sil'roui)de cum even in the asylums for the insane, and why teate people suffer their children to be cowed and
Voide_ . n merely jo
,_gratify the passion. of some little-
,falld do-mine, who kiioivs nO more about human nature
lie does about the valleys and mountains in the
%mon ?--Glassow Constitutiona