£100 as for duties for that amount ?-My impression is that the receipt goes from the receiver-general by one of our messengers to the long-room. The next officer is the comptroller-general, whose duty it is to control all demands for payments made to the Board of Customs; he is a considerable check upon the receiver-general, who cannot operate upon the balance at the Bank of England, or perform any function connected with the payment of money, without the counter-signature of the comptroller-general.

(936) Cannot the receiver-general draw the money out of the Bank of England without the counter-signature of the comptroller-general?—No, he cannot.

(937) What is his salary ?-£800, and he has an assistant at a salary varying from £400 to £500, and 21 clerks, at salaries varying from £70 to £350.

(938) Are the duties of his office more onerous than those of the receiver-general's office?-They are more onerous in point of detail; the responsibility of the receiver-general in having so much money under his control is very great. But the comptroller-general has to check every bill with reference to every payment that is made, and to make the calculations, and to ascertain that the charge is a correct one. There are the officers' salaries and the allowance to officers for their travelling expenses, and payments on account of buildings; in short every payment made by the Customs must be controlled by the comptroller-general or his deputy, who is responsible not only for the amount, but for the authority of the expenditure. He controls also the accounts, after payment has been made and credit taken for the same.

(939) Then the duty of the comptroller-general is mainly to regulate the expenditure of the establishment of the Customs -Yes,

(940) The officers are paid quarterly?—Yes.

(941) Are those who receive a certain sum per day paid quarterly?—They receive their 2s. 6d. a day every month; and a portion of their salaries are also paid monthly. There are some clerks that have asked to be paid their salaries more frequently than quarterly, and when we find that it is a case of distress and poverty we always allow it. There is next the Examiner's Office. All the entries which have passed the

Long-Room for payment of duties are sent to the Examiner's Office, and he exercises a check and control over them to see that no mistake has been made in the Long-Room in the calculation of the duties. He records all those transactions under their proper heads, and his office constitutes the office from whence all the details of imports and exports are derived. He records the home-cosumption entries under different heads; that is also divided under the different countries from whence the goods have been imported; and he is enabled by that means not only to check the proceedings of the Long-Room and of the inferior officers, but to keep books which enable Mr. Irving, the inspector-general of imports and exports, to provide statistical returns for the use of Parliament and the country. The examiner has a salary varying from £500 to £600, and his establishment is in the course of being very much enlarged, because his jurisdiction has been recently extended to the out-ports as well as London. Formerly the examiners in London had no knowledge of the state of trade at the out-ports, except that they examined the entries to ascertain that the proper rate of duty had been charged. The officers at the out-ports kept their own books of account and record, and if Parliament required a return of the quantity of sugar or any other article imported at an outport, it was necessary to write down to the out-port to obtain the information, unless it should so happen that the particulars could be rendered from the ordinary periodical accounts of trade prepared by Mr. Irving. By an arrangement recently made, all those entries of transactions are sent up day by day from the out-ports to the examiner in London; in that way he has the same knowledge of the amount and nature of the business transacted at the out-ports as of that transacted in London. But that has added to the duties of the office, and a considerable enlargement has taken place in the department. There is the jerquer, whose duty it is to see that the entire cargo of the ship has been properly brought to account. When the cargo is entered, he must see that the whole of that cargo has been properly weighed and landed, and either warehoused or the duty has been paid upon it. He has before him and all the landing

the ship's report, the tide-waiters' books,

waiters' books, in which they record, from time to time

throughout the day, the different packages which are landed; and if he finds any irregularity in the landing-waiters' books, he puts a query to it, and the landing-waiter is called upon to give an explanation. Those accounts are not considered as cleared, or the ship's cargo properly jerqued, till the whole of the cargo has been accounted for, and those queries have been answered to the satisfaction of the jerquer; and if any portion of the cargo has been abstracted without the payment of duty, the jerquer detects it.

(948) The landing-waiters have to send in their books to the jerquer?-Yes, they are laid before him for examination; there is one jerquer, and there are about ten clerks in his office; the number varies with the amount of business from time to time.

(949) What is his salary?-It varies from £400 to £450. There is one class of officers that I have omitted, viz. the clerks for general business; they are not attached to any particular department, but they are placed in different branches, under different heads of departments, wherever their services are required; they are 181 in number, and their salaries vary from £75 to £300; they are divided into six classes. For instance, in the jerquer's office there will be ten clerks for the general business; if he wanted another clerk, of course he would apply to the surveyors-general, and another clerk would be apportioned to him; those clerks are also employed in the warehousing department at the respective docks and legal quays; they constitute the clerks under the comptrollers of accounts at the different docks; they keep the entire accounts of the goods under charge in those establishments, and are applicable to the different parts of the es tablishments.

Connected with the tide-waiters there is the office of housesurgeon, whose salary is £600 per annum. Formerly all daypay officers in London, that is, the lockers, weighers, and tidewaiters, were entitled to have a surgeon at the public expense to attend upon them when they were ill; under a recent arrangement they have been deprived of that advantage, with the exception of all those officers who entered the service previously to the new arrangement, and whom he is still bound to attend; but we find his services exceedingly useful in visiting

officers by direction of the Board when they are off duty, and when they make excuses for non-attendance on the ground of sickness. . . . The collector of the port of London is a very important officer, receiving a salary of £1,200 per annum; and the comptroller of the port of London receives a salary of £1,100 per annum. In addition to their duties as superintending the whole of the Long-Room establishment, which is the branch for the computation of duties and the receipt of money, they constitute what are called the "bench officers," whose duty it is to advise the Board upon all practical questions connected with the Long-Room and warehousing departments; all papers upon those subjects, and the registry of vessels, and almost every question that arises which is not connected with the outdoor branch, is referred to the collector and comptroller, as the "bench officers," who report to the Board, and they communicate from time to time with merchants and other parties upon any question that arises.

(921. Chairman.) Does the collector settle the amount of duty upon every cargo?-That business is performed by clerks under the names of receivers and computers; when an entry is tendered in the Long-Room for so many bags of coffee, containing so many pounds, at such and such a duty, the computers have to ascertain whether the amount which the merchant has calculated is the correct amount; and having ascertained that it is so, the entry is allowed to go forward.

(922) It does not come under the inspection of the collector? -Not under his personal inspection, because there are officers appointed to do that duty.

(923) Then the duties of the collector are to superintend the Long-Room ?—Yes; if any difficulty arises reference is immediately made to the bench officers at the head of the department. There are eighty-five clerks in the Long Room, at salaries varying from £75 to £700 per annum; there are at present sixteen vacancies on the establishment, and it is intended to make a permanent reduction of twenty-eight officers.

(924) No fresh officers in lieu of those twenty-eight will be appointed?-No: the officers whose services will be discontinued in the Long-Room will be removed to the office of the examiner, where some further increase of the staff will be necessary.

(925) Do those eighty-five clerks include all the officers who compute the duties and receive the receipts from the receivergeneral, and then pass the goods ?-Yes, and they have all the duties connected with the registry of vessels, which is a most important part of the duty done in the Long-Room.

(926. Mr. Anderson.) Do not the collector and comptroller, who are technically called bench officers, receive and attest all declarations made in the course of transacting business in the Custom-house?—Yes; the Act of Parliament requires that declarations of all kinds should be made before them. Formerly they administered an oath; now it is only a declaration, but it is invariably made before them; and all bonds that are entered into, are entered into at the Long-Room.

§ 2. PERQUISITES, ELEEMOSYNARY PAYMENTS, AND

FINES.

A practice prevails in the Customs of charging the merchants of London for the over-time of their officers, if they happen to be employed beyond certain hours. The charges are extravagant, and are made for the performance of duties at hours which are really not "over-time," as is shown in the evidence of Sir Thomas Fremantle.

(754. Chairman.) Can you state to the Committee what the expense chargeable to the merchant would be for the extre attendance of a Customs officer per hour, discharging sugar from a ship from Cuba at the West India Dock?-I find that the expense per hour of the officers would be 10s. if the sugar were landed duty paid, but it is not the practice to land sugar duty paid; and if it goes into the warehouse, additional officers would be required, at an expense of 2s. 6d., making the whole expense per hour, 12s. 6d.

(755) Is that expense the same in proportion whether it is one hour or two hours ?-Yes, it is a uniform expense per hour; but where more than one ship is unloading at one time, as is frequently the case at Liverpool, the expense of the officers is materially reduced, because in discharging ships, the landing-surveyor and the landing-waiter would serve several ships along the quay; you would not want a landing-surveyor