Curiosities of the Customs.

Our persistent exposure of the wasteful abuses at the small Customs' Ports, has at length produced some result : the establishments at Campbeltown, Padstow, and Wisbech (which Sir J. Lubbock's return of 1874 showed to be costing about 72,000 per cent, upon the amount of duty collected), have now been "grouped" with the larger staffs at Greenock, Plymouth, and Lynn respectively. Those at Aberystwith, Kirkwall, Scilly, Beaumaris, Lerwick, Milford, and Borrowstowness (which collected about a halfpenny per day a-piece), have been "grouped" with Carnarvon, Wick, Falmouth, Llanelly, and Grangemouth. With the last-named port has also been coupled Alloa (where £130 was annually collected for the Revenue, at a cost of £800, or 615 per cent.), and with Plymouth has been "grouped" Fowey (where £1,143 was spent on getting in £85—i.e., 1,345 per cent.), with Greenock Ardrossan is bracketed, Ardrossan celebrated for collecting £116 at a cost of £721, or 622 per cent. The 56 gentlemen who lived in clover at these and other ports, collecting 3s. a man per day and writing one form and half a letter a-piece, have been whitted down to six we presume, or all pensioned off, which is more likely. Then again Skibbereen, with its roaring revenue of £281 costing £509 to get in, has been joined to Cork; and Grangemouth now that two other Lilliputian "Ports" have been "grouped" with it, may be expected to collect a little more than £921 for a little less than £2,486, or 269 per cent. Lastly, there are those 12 Harbours of bliss, where the 46 gentlemen filled up two forms a-piece per day and collected an average of £1 each before going home. What has become of them? Lyme, Youghal, Chepstow, and Woodbridge appear no more at all on the Customs' List. Runcorn and Fleetwood have been joined to Liverpool, Teign-mouth to Exeter, Faversham to Ramsgate, and Montrose to Dundee, &c., &c.

We part with these "curiosities," not without a sigh, for they have long given piquancy to our pages, helping our lecturers to point many a moral and adorn many a tale. And, in conclusion, we ask the reader to note that the frightful and wanton waste of public money by the Customs System has been so little heeded by Parliament that even these, the most glaring, instances were allowed to go on fully ten years after Sir John Lubbock's Return before application of a remedy. We suppose Mr. Courtney was the man who at length stopped this leakage of the taxpayers' money, for we believe he effected several similar reforms whilst at the Treasury.