The Commissioners appoint...
The Times, 1824-07-20T00:00:00

The Commissioners appointed to inquire into the dle- partments of the Customs and Excise have published an- other Report, being the 16th, and in it have confined them- selves to the subject of defective regulations in the latter and miot complex of the two establishments. One cir- cumstance of a perplexing nature has always appeared to us to stand in the 'vay of a really efficient system of Excise aws, .arising ont of the assumption on which the entire manifold refinements in the art of detection-the suspect- ing, pryiig, watching, measuring, gauging, -umbering, locking up, permitting, the property of all traders, of eve ry rank and character, nmust be kept in force by equal inge- nuity, dlirected against the officers and instruments of the system itself, or the whole scheme goce to pieces. It would be a grievous inconsistency to imagine that no merehant or private gentleman can be trusted to the amount of sixpence where the Excise duty is concerned, yet that every Ex- cise officer must be worthy of confidence when thousands of pounds are within his grasp. We find, accordingly, that at least half the torturings and rackings. of the brain which the Excise. laws have cost our legisla- tors, have sprtng from the wondrous difficulty of de- vising sufficient safeguards against the corruption of the Exciseman, paid as he is for preventing the bad effects of other men's dishonesty. Checks and couaterchecks upon their own officers have been multiplied ad infilitum by the Government-bribery by the Crowv in the. shape of roward for active services has becn resorted to, and often, -'it is feared, withlout success, as an antidote to the bribes of the smuggler, administered to the Exciseman as rewards for shortness of sight, inertness of inotion, or other natural in- firmities;butstill "collu'slon; in its vast varietyof disguises is the grand impediment to a thorough reformation of the systema. New modes of deception ara hourly framed' 'to baffle the growving experience of the law-makers, anm the hundred eyes of " the Commissioners," even multiplied by an hundred, would serve, perhaps, but to confuse their vision. The report now before us contains a long enume- .ration of the unsuccessful expedients to which the Govern- ment had from time to time hi&d recourse, for enabling the officer to counteract the arts of the smuggler, or for securing the public against their joint malpractices. We cannot here do more than advise our commercial readers to turn to the document itself for information upon the improvements recommended by the Board of Inquiry, who present the heads of the complicatedi subject to the Treasury in some- thing like the following order, and whose suggestions appear to us to be marked in general by discrimination and good sense:-" The modie of making seizures, and rewards for "them-capture and detention of smuggling mariners-of "smuggling vessels-necessity of prompt payment to the "seizing officers-regulations for appraisement of goods "seized-Londou and the outports-the niilitary engageed "in giving assistance to Excise-officers-the custody, trans- mission, and final disposition of seized goods-salvage- "e expediency of an half-yearly report ffom the Board of "Excise to the Treasury-of a consolidation of the Excise "laws-of a new code of iWKructions to the officers,-of an "improved audit of the accounts of Customs and Excise." The Commissioners are-Right Hon. C. LONG, Itord G. C. HI. SO'HsRSET, and W. H. LVSH11NGTON.