The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-12-31
General Grants Next Battle.

The Government now employs over sixteen
thousand Office holders in collecting, account
ing, and paying the revenue and expenditures
of some twenty-five thousand other officers,
and the interest on the Pubnc dept. Ine
foundations and opportunities for dishonesty
in this branch of the service exceed those in
all the others combined. The jority of the
people believe, with good reason, that rotten
ness and corruption reek in the Departments
of Customs and Internal Revenue, and that in
these fields will lie President Grants earliest
and most urgent opportunities for reform. The
causes Of this corruption are manifold. AT first
we were willing to assign as leading one the
novelty of the internal revenue systsm. But
the internal revenue taxes have now been
in operation long enough for the modes OF
prevention, as well as of stealing under 1t,
to be reduced to a system. If this has not
been done it is due not to the novelty Of the
system, but to the negligence of those who
administer it. The internal revenue system
was organized by the Hon. George S. Bout
well, as chief of the bureau, and most of the
obstacles arising from its novelty were over
come under his vigorous and efficient admin
istration. The administration of Andrew
Johnson has been one long effort to use the
appointments in the revenue and customs
Service as bribes to buy up supporters for his
political policies. This has been the main
cause of dishonesty in the collection of reve-
nues. For the moment it was understood, as
it has now for three years been, that no Off
cial, however honest would be retained who
opposed the Presidents Reconstruction
policies, nor, however corrupt, be removed if
he supported them, it was public notice to all
to ''steal all they could, and stand by the
and Secretary McCulloch there has
been for three years the marplot
hand of Andrew Johnson, interfering
with and overruling every effort to secure
honesty; for 1t has been q common o0inci
dence that those who were most ready to agree
with the President, in order to keep Office,
were most ready to sell the revenues for their
private profit. 1t ia impossible to know,
therefore, whether McCuloch and Rollins are
deficient in executive ability or not, since they
have had no opportunity to execute their own
policies. But the majority of the customs
officers and internal revenue assessors, from
Maine to California, being selected from those
who have sold their convictions to get Office,
have, with the same ease, prostituted their
official powers to get money. The difficulty is
not, as the President untruly charges in his
message, that these officers collect the revenue
and do not pay it over. An ordinary mode of
swindling the Government is for the collector
20 accept, on his own account, a third
or fourth of the tax to which the
Government is entitled, and allow the
distiller or other taxpayer to escape the re-
mainder OF the tax by false return. Another
mode is to make seizures, and then effect
compromises, in which thousand dollars
paid to the collector or district attorney has
more influence to settle the case than $4,000
paid as tax to the Government. The whole
system of seizures by informers is of very
doubtful expediency and economy. For the
informers, having as large pecuniary interest
in the transaction as the distillers, and con-
sisting often of men of at least no better
sx,ta kbA I,,ni l.
tion. They work every seizure as a placer
for plunder, not as officers in the interest of
the Government. They so often use corrupt
means to secure profitable compromise, or
the conviction of some obstinate party who
refuses to compromise, that pretended effort
to collect tax becomes criminal conspiracy
to defraud the taxpayer.
When the Government begins by bribing
and buying informers and witnesses, it ought
to remember that it will only secure the SER
vices of its agents in case the criminals whom
they are prosecuting shall not bid higher.
The moment their bribe covers the informer's
fees the case will be settledto suit them. The
whole system of giving informers distribu-
tive share-a third or half of the property
seized-tends to endless corruption. Take
the Collector of the Port, for instance. He
receives salary of $4,000 to pay for his SER
vices towards collecting so much of the reve-
distributive shares or fees as an informer in
the seizure cases amount to over $50, 900 year.
His perquisites in these plunder cases are five
times his salary, and considerably more than
the salary of the President of the United States.
But what he receives from these cases is but
a small share of the whole plunder divided.
The Naval Officer comes in for an annual in
come of forty thousand dollars from the same
source. The Surveyor of the Port and the
hundreds Of subordinate inspectors and other
officers by whom these seizures are worked
up all have their shares. AS these officers
make five times as much out of violations of
the law as they do ont Of its obedience, five
times as much of their attention is given to
seeing the law violated as to seeing it obeyed.
Here opens another system of corruption.
Importers, knowing that customs officers can
by a seizure put them to about as much loss
in an unjust case as in a ust one, prefer to
retain and pay certain officers of the Custom
House, and so avoid all seizures, whether
guilty or innocent.
The discovery the other day, that certain
firms had imported over half million dollars
worth of silks, under pretense that they were
window shades, shows one Of the modes of
swindling rendered possible by corruption in
the Custom House. OF course, only a few of
the packages of goods imported can be actu ally
opened and examined. 1t is supposed, how
ever, that If out OF twenty packages the ap-
praiser examines two at random, he may safely
pass the others. But if the importer eau, by
a card or a wink, designate to the appraisers
clerk which packages he shall examine, the
two examined will be window shades, while
the others will be silks.
Twenty columns of this paper would not
suffice to detail minutely the various modes
which corruption in the Custom House and