FREE LUGGAGE.
[TO TRH EDITOR OF TEE "SPROTAT011.1
STR,—Often the best guarantee for the vitality of a custom is that no one has anything to urge in its defence. For whilst some in- stitutions fall the sooner by reason of the very pertinacity with which they are defended, others seem to survive and thrive owing to their being too defenceless to be provocative of attack. Reform, like lightning, only strikes what is high and prominent, and whilst churches and dynasties fall, adulteration in groceries may go perennially unpunished. Of this political law can a better instance be given, than the survival, in an ago which Lae seen freedom of travel finally realised in the gradual abolition of the passport system, of Custom-House restrictions on the free importation of luggage ?
What are not the evils which the mention of the word douane is calculated to call up before the minds of the numerous nomad tribes of civilisation? Who requires to be reminded of those officials, who began by treating him as a gentleman and ended by treating him as a smuggler ; who ransacked his boxes with a ruthless,disregard of the skill he bad spent in packing them, or of the Titanic efforts he had expended in locking them ; who exposed their most secret contents to the public gaze, and finally
left him to relook them as best be could, when reduced in vitality by midnight cold or mid-day heat, and debilitated by the humilia- tion of a proceeding only befitting the bygone ages of commercial ignorance, and sufficient to sour the serenity of a seraph ?
Whether or not Customs duties are a desirable source of national revenue, or even leaving it for granted that they are, several considerations occur with respect to that particular portion of them which are levied, not from merchant vessels, but from travellers' luggage. In the first place, it is probable that the amount of revenue raised on liable articles, either declared or detected, does not cover the expenses Of collecting it. Secondly, the superficial way in which it is at present collected affords no security against smuggling, and whatever reason exists for sus- pecting every traveller to be a smuggler exists surely for treating him altogether as such, and for subjecting his boxes to an ex- amination as searching as possible. Lastly, a tax of a few pence on every article of registered luggage would more than compensate the national exchequer for any loss it might incur in surrendering a method of taxation world-famous for the discomfort in entails.
But to suppose that any such loss would really occur from the removal of the Custom-House restrictions on travel, is to forget that the expenses of the journey would be a sure guarantee against the carrying-on of trade by the systematic importation of taxed articles in bags and portmanteaus. Take, for example, eau de Cologne. The duty on a gallon is 16s. 6d., but to make profit from a dutiless importation, it would be necessary to travel from Cologne to London with as many gallons of the water as would rather more than cover by their sale the expenses in- curred by the journey. Clearly, it would be more profitable to a London dealer to have a given quantity of the water con- signed to him in the usual course from a firm at Cologne, and to pay duty on it into the bargain, than it would be to pay a subordinate to bring over a supply periodically from Cologne to London in his portmanteau, even supposing he could thus receive it free of duty altogether. And the same principle applies to plate, tobacco, tea, chicory, or anything else now searched for among travellers' clothing. That the remittance of duties on travellers' imports would not make national ruin any the more imminent may at least be conjectured by the fact that in 1862, when taxed articles had been reduced to the number of 44, the gross produce of the Customs' :duties exceeded by more than three millions sterling what it had been in 1841, when so many as 1,163 articles had to pay duty on importation.
The only three conceivable arguments against admitting travel- lers' boxes into the country free of search may be summed up as the financial, the political, and the theological objections. The financial one, that the revenue would suffer, has been discussed. The political objection, to the effect that snch a reform would depend on international reciprocity, and that it would be impru- dent for one country to take the lead in the path of enlightened liberality on the assumption that others would follow, deserves two answers,—first, that as easily as an international agreement has been made concerning letters might one be made concerning luggage ; secondly, that failing such an agreement, we might rest assured, from our experience about passports, of the safety of being the foremost to follow the dictates of reason. The theo- logical objection, which would trace an origin and sanction for the Custom-House in the Biblical precedent of the search to which Joseph subjected the sacks of his brethren, is perhaps one rather to be prospectively than actually dreaded. That some political energy may be expended in bringing about such an international (or even only national) reform must be the cordial wish of all who have ever endured the agonies of a douane. Whoever first seta his hand to the task will assuredly have deserved well of his
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