The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1845-06-10 00:00:00

CUSTOMS RESTRICTIONS AT LIVERPOOL.

The TOWN-CLERK read the report of the special com-
mittee appointed by the council on the sth February last,
to inquire into the unnecessary restrictions imposed upon
the trade of this port by the Board of Customs, and the
insufficiency of the Customs Establishment for the grow-
ing wants of the port. The report, after noticing the in-
terview which they had with Sir IL Peel, accompanied
by our borough members, the purport of which we gave
at the time, proceeded as follows:
" Your committee have reason to believe that arrange-
ments are now being made for a considerable addition to
the number of Custom-house officers at Liverpool, as well
as for a proper and legitimate increase in the salaries of
the officers ; but your committee desire again to record
their opinion—an opinion in which they feel assured they
are joined by nearly the whole of the mercantile commu-
nity of Liverpool—that no measure short of reverting to
the remunerative system of paying the landing-waiters,
will satisfy the wants, and ought not therefore to satisfy
the just demands, of the community.
" It is true that a partial redress of some of the minor
grievances pointed out by your committee has taken place
—by giving a discretionary power to the heads of the
Custom-house department at Liverpool, in case of the
seizure of vessels with a trifling quantity of tobacco on
board, and with regard also to granting licenses to ves-
sels ; but, even in these cases, the redress falls short of
what the merchants had a right to expect.
" During the past month two commissioners of the
Board of Customs have visited Liverpool. As, however,
your committee thought it undesirable, in the first in-
stance, to apply to the Board of Customs, but to the
First Lord of the Treasury, so, in pursuance of the same
view, they thought it better, as a committee, to abstain
from having any interview with the commissioners, who
might be said to be sitting in judgment on their own
measures.

" That your committee were right in the view which
they thus took, was fully confirmed by the fact that the
chairman having, at the request of the commissioners,
met them at the Custom-house, and having alluded to
the subject of the mode of paying the landing-waiters,
was info►med by them that that must be considered ' a
closed question.' Your committee, however, feel assured
that the merchants will never consent to consider this as
a closed qurstion so long as there is a higher power to
which they can appeal, and until the commissioners are
prepared to point out a more substantial objection to it
than they have ever yet been able to do.
" In concluding their report, the committee are grati-
fied its being able to state, that they have received the
assurance of Sir Robert Peel that be will come to no final
decision on the recommendation of the Board of Customs,
with respect to the report of the town council, without
communicating with your committee on the subject.
" THOMAS B. HORSFALL Chairman."
_ _

Mr. HORSFALL said the committee felt that the state-
ment did little more than report progress and ask per-
mission to sit again, but they thought it due to the coun-
cil, and also to the public, to make known what they had
been doing. He begged to assure the council that no
delay whatever had taken place on the part of the com-
mittee, notwithstanding three months bad elapsed since
the list report was presented, and that no delay, consis-
tent with propriety and courtesy, would be permitted to
take place until the committee were prepared to present
the council with a far more satisfactory report than any
they had yet been able to do. He knew the committee
might be told that they had hardly allowed time sufficient
for the Board of Customs to effect the reforms pointed
out to them. This might be very well for gentlemen sit-
ting in London, and uninterested in the question, to al-
lege; but when he stated that at one period during the
past month there were no less than sixty or seventy ves-
sels waiting for landing-waiters, notwithstanding the em-
ployment of forty additional tide-waiters, he thought a
quarter of a year was quite long enough to have the de-
tects remedied. (Hear, hear.) Reference was made in
the report to an interview which he had with the commis-
sioners of the Board of Customs when they were in Li-
verpool. That interview he had had with them, not at
his own solicitation, but at their request; and he might,
perhaps, be permitted to make a remark or two with re-
ference to what had taken place on that occasion. He
told them that although lie had no authority from the
cammittee of the council to meet them, yet he doubted
not that if they would furnish a copy of their reply to
the report of the Board of Customs to the council, the
committee would be prepared to enter into the merits of
the report and the reply—that the taking of both con-
jointly might be the most desirable course to pursue,
whilst the commissioners were in Liverpool, as the com-
mittee had no other object in view than to ascertain the
truth, end that, if the report and the reply were conflict-
ing, the commissioners, while on the spot, would have the
books of the Custom-house here to guide them in arriving
at a right conclusion. This request was declined, court-
eously certainly, but positively. Now, in the absence of
that reply, he could only gather—and he believed he was
not far wrong in gathering—something of its substance.
He understood the Commissioners of Customs objected
to the remunerative system of paying the landing-waiters
on several grounds, one of which the committee noticed
in their last report, and satisfactorily answered—that was,
what they urged with regard to the desirableness of uni-
formity of system. The committee showed that there
was no uniformity at the different ports. The next thing
was, the desirableness of having one set of porters in the
discharge of a vessel, instead of several, as at present.
He perfectly agreed with the Board of Customs as to the
desirableness of this measure. Many gentlemen here
equally agreed with them, and, in fact, the system had
been adopted by many houses in Liverpool, and would
be most &Arable if adopted altogether. But when
brought forward as an argument against the remunerative
system, how did it stand ? The merchants of Liverpool
had had experience of the remunerative system for eleven
years, when the porterage was exactly the same as is was
at present, and when every gentleman sent down hiebsyn
porters,—so that this did not apply as an argument
against the remunerative system. Another point the
commissioners made was, that the merchants' clerks and
porters caused a delay by not being down at the vessel in
the morning when the landing-waiter was there to dis-
charge. If this were the case, which he denied, for al-
though cases of the kind might occur, yet as a general
rule it was not so; still lie maintained that it was the
very strongest argument which could be brought forward
in favour of the remunerative system. And how ? Send
a landing-waiter with a fixed salary down to a vessel, and
what did it matter to him, so long as his salary was run-
ning on, at what hour the vessel commenced discharging,
whether at eight, nine, or ten o'clock? But put him
upon the remunerative system, and he would not stop at
a vessel where the parties had not arrived, but he would
go to one where the clerks and porters were in attendance.
This would make the clerks and porters attend more assi-
siuously to their duties, and bring about a thorough reform
in the system. (Hear.) Another thing the commission-
ers stated was, that no :good would be effected until we
got warehouses round the dock quays. He was not going
to raise any question on this subject. He was quite aware
of the differences of opinion to which it bad given rise.
and, therefore, he was not going to argue the merits of
the question, but merely to allude to an argument used
by the Board of Customs. Why, when the remunerative
system was in operation eleven years—namely, from 1818
to 1829—there was not a single warehouse on the dock
quays, and yet the system worked admirably, and without