The Sun.
London, England, 1868-07-22 00:00:00

REVENUE ERA UDS.

It is vain for the United States to attempt the
task of rooting out corruption without a total re-
form in the Civil Service, however severe may
be the sentences passed on offenders. Besides
the convictions in New York and in Richmond six
persons in Philadelphia have been sentenced for
defrauding the revenue of the whisky tax, to a
year's imprisonment, and a fine in each case of
$20,000. Theophilus C. Callicott had been re-
ceived as a convict at the Albany Penitentiary,
which eight years before he had visited as Speaker
of the New York house of Assembly. His whiskers
were shaved off, his hair cropped, prison attire
donned, and he was locked into his cell for the
night. The absurdity of the position is that he re-
mains Revenue collector of Brooklyn, having only
been suspended, neither having resigned, nor yet
been removed. He demanded the trial, and no one
was so surprised as himself at the conviction.
Enwright, who had lately married a young and
estimable lady of Brooklyn, was treated by the
prison authorities in the same way, and feels keenly
the disgrace brought on himself and those connected
with him. it is really painful to see men of such
position almost betrayed into the commission of
crime owing to the lax system which every effort
to remedy, has as yet failed. Prevention is better
than cure, and if Congress instead of wasting time
with such cases as that of Woolley, and occupying
months in a State Trial ending in poor Vinnie Ream's
ejection from her room in the Capital, would take up
the Civil Service Bill of Mr. Jenckes and the Inland
Tax Bill of Mr. Schenck, we would hear little of
such cases in the future. Both parties are now
too intent on the Presidential campaign, and get-
ting up cries to attract voters, such as the taxation
of United States Bonds and their redemption with
greenbacks, to condescend to such merely useful
measures as those ; and so corruption flourishes,
and will continue to flourish, until Uncle Sam in
anger with a broom sweeps lobbyists aud politi-
cians into the Potomac. In Tennessee several
officers of the Quartermaster's Department have
been convicted of trafficking in Public Stores. It
was proved that they sold timber costing the Go-
vernment
$l5 per 1,000 feet at $B, which was re-
' sold at the prices paid by the Government—all
sharing in the profit. Each was fined $50,000,
and their transactions must have been on a gigan-
tic scale if the payment of such a sum leaves a
surplus. A neat thing in swindles has also turned
up in the Paymaster's Department, by which some
officers of the Freedmen's Bureau, in conjunction
with Treasury and War-office clerks, appropriated
the claims of negro soldiers. A bounty, early in
the war of poo was offered to every freedman who
volunteered, and to every slave the bounty was
$lOO. The conspirators purchased from the co-
loured men their discharge papers, then applied for
the bounty of those who were entitled to but $lOO
for $3OO, pocketing not only this difference, but that
between the sum at which the discharge paper
was obtained and that it really represented.
A rumour is afloat that an immense num-
ber of these discharges have been forged, and
Congress has appointed a committee to investigate
the subject. If the revenue officers cannot make
money by profiting in the frauds they endeavour to
do so by exposing and counteracting them. On the
20th June a judgment was delivered in the United
States District Court, at Boston, by Judge Lowell
ou the claims of c)llectors to an allowance as in-
formers. Large quantities of spirits had been
seized at Buffalo, and brought to Boston, and the
collector of internal Revenue there, the special
agent of the Treasury department at Buffalo, and
the collector, besides two Revenue inspectors of
Boston, claimed a share of the plunder. The judge
very properly disallowed the claims, but awarded
about $l,OOO each to two gentlemen unconnected
with the Government.