LEAF AND CO.

HC Deb 21 February 1832 vol 10 cc585-92

Mr. George Bankes

said, he expected, at the time he gave notice relative to the case of Messrs. Leaf and Co., that the discussion which might arise in consequence of the topics which it would be his duty to introduce to the notice of the House, would have been preceded by some discussion upon the distress of those persons with respect to whom the hon. member for Coventry had given the notice which stood for that night. It was not for him to say whether that hon. Member had acted with the best discretion in consenting to the postponement of his notice as he had done. It was sufficient for him to know that the parties most interested had informed him, upon his applying to them, that his Motion would not in the least interfere with their object, and that, on the contrary, they were anxious it should come on for debate. Under these circumstances, therefore, he had no hesitation in proceeding with the notice which he had entered. He should not find it necessary to occupy at any great length the time or attention of the House; for he trusted to be able, with great facility, to make out such a case as appeared to him, and, as he hoped would appear to the House, seriously to call upon his Majesty's Ministers for some explanation. He grounded this notice, and his introduction of the subject to which it related to the House, upon those distresses of which so much had been said. When he considered that Ministers, at the time the transaction to which he was about to call the attention of the House took place, were fully aware of the existence of this distress, and had received, from day to day, memorials with respect to it from the petitioners, it appeared to him extraordinary that Government should have thought itself justified in sanctioning any remission of the penalties which the law imposed for the protection of the trade of these distressed persons, in whose behalf he appealed to the House. The petitioners complained that the provisions of the law, even as fully enforced, were not sufficient to ensure them a fair remuneration for their labour, and if the Government, therefore, instead of enforcing the law, had sanctioned the violation of it, these parties must be seriously aggrieved, and the House ought to be well satisfied as to the justice of the grounds upon which Ministers proceeded. It might be right for him, in the first instance, as the circumstances might not be fresh in the memory of all who heard him, to state how it was, that the matter first came under the cognizance of the House. In August last, the hon. member for Preston asked a question of the right hon. the Vice-President of the Board of Trade, relative to certain seizures of silk which had been just then made; to which the right hon. Gentleman answered, that the penalties incurred would be levied to the utmost extent of the law. This was a few days subsequent to the period at which the transaction took place; and the House had reason to feel some degree of surprise when, early in December last, on the hon. Member's renewing his question, it was found that a compromise had taken place with the offending parties, and the full amount of the penalties had not been enforced. Upon that occasion the hon. and learned Attorney General appeared to take some credit to himself for having made a very good bargain for the public, in obtaining so large a sum as 20,000l. by way of penalty. He differed from the hon. and learned Gentleman, for he could not admit that it was a good bargain as respected the public, because the compromise was injurious to the fair trader. Whoever would look at the papers, and consider the information which was laid, on that occasion, before Government, by credible witnesses, who might have been produced at a trial, could not fail to see what must have been the result of taking the case into a court of justice. If, indeed, the witnesses were not to be believed, any compromise was an act of injustice to the parties implicated. But the truth was, that the case did not rest upon the testimony of the informers alone, for the facts stated in the returns amounted to a confession by the parties that the major portion of these goods were justly seized. It appeared that, on the night following the first seizure, which took place on the 5th of August, under circumstances that admitted no doubt of its justice, the parties composing this firm were employed in packing up goods, which they removed from their premises. This circumstance, till explained, amounted to a confession of the charge, and, therefore, the bargain made by the Government was not a good one, for, had the proceedings been regularly pursued, the full amount of penalties would have been recovered—penalties, be it remembered, not given to eke out the quarter's revenue, but for the protection of those distressed persons engaged in our home trade. There was no ground of compassion urged for the remission of these penalties. The parties were well able to bear the full amount of the penalties. But, putting aside the mere question of penalties, he entreated the House to consider what would have been the moral effect of bringing a respectable firm like this into a court of justice, and of exposing them, if they had been found guilty, to all the public odium they would so well have deserved? By entering into a compromise with them, that odium was avoided—a circumstance in itself which tended to diminish the moral effect of public opinion upon transactions such as this. If it was once admitted, that infamy and honour could be made a matter of barter and sale of pounds, shillings, and pence—of gaining 20,000l. for the revenue, when, perhaps, that was very convenient to the revenue—a doctrine would be sanctioned, which, he trusted, that House would never tolerate. But if that were not the meaning of this good bargain, what was meant by it? It was no answer to the charge, to say, that such compromises had taken place before. In small cases, the compromise of an offence against the revenue might be laudable; for it might be a course of compassion not to enforce the full penalties, to the total ruin of a poor man. But, in a case of magnitude like this, where the parties were all wealthy, and where the attention of the right hon. the Vice-President of the Board of Trade had been called to the subject before the compromise could have been proposed—before the matter had been taken into any court of law—in fact, within ten days of the transaction, no compromise ought to have taken place, even supposing that the party prosecuted saved only 5l., instead of 13,000l., by it. He must say, if the papers laid upon the Table of the House in relation to this subject were full and accurate, that Ministers had abused their discretion. But, after all that had been affirmed upon this subject, they had had no information as to what proceedings were actually commenced, or whether any were actually commenced—how they were stopped—and whether the proposition for a composition came from the Government, or from the parties themselves. He submitted, with confidence, to the House, that the facts had not yet been brought completely before them; and that the additional information which it was the object of his Motion to obtain was wanting. The House was, of course, aware, that a discretionary power was vested in the Government with respect to transactions of this nature. There were three different modes of effecting a compromise. It might be effected by a minute of the Lords of the Treasury, by an order of the Board of Customs, or even, after the matter had been carried into court, by the Attorney General's entering a nolle prosequi. He did not know which of these three courses had been taken in the present case, and, in his view of the subject, that was of no consequence whatever. Government could not rely upon former precedents. They could not say—"We have followed the ordinary course on such occasions, by accepting four-fifths of the penalty we should have recovered by going into a court of law." He contended that the condition of the starving English weavers made the following such a course, on the present occasion, an improper and unjust exercise of this discretion, especially after the pledge which was given by the right hon. the Vice-President of the Board of Trade. If the money thus recovered were to be applied to the maintenance of these starving weavers, he might agree with the Attorney General that the learned Gentleman had made a good bargain, and could easily imagine that, with those kindly feelings which are known to govern his heart, he might say, "let us get this 20,000l. to a certainty, for the benefit of these poor people, without going into a court of law for the chance of 10,000l. more." If such had been the case, he might admit, that the compromise would have been beneficial to the weavers; but, he could not, even for their advantage, sanction a course which had the tendency to weaken the little protection the trade now derived from the law. When the present commercial system was introduced, it was said and written—by way of offering a great inducement to the removal of the then existing prohibitions,—that it would check, if not effectually prevent, smuggling. It was urged, that honourable and respectable persons, if an article were prohibited, could only obtain it by evading the law, but that they would be ashamed to do this, if a legitimate channel were opened by which they could obtain it. This was an argument addressed to every man's feelings; and if it did not of itself make converts to the new system, it no doubt went a great way to produce consent to a trial of the experiment. But what became of all that, if a respectable commercial house like the one in question was allowed to compromise? Government should have said at once, "whether you be guilty or not we will make no compromise with you; we consider the evasion of these duties an illegal act, and we will not give it our sanction by a compromise, although the revenue might benefit by such a compromise." Supposing the contents of these papers could be relied upon, he had no doubt that a professional man, of abilities infinitely less than those of the Attorney General, would have insured a verdict in any court into which the case might have been carried. He knew Messrs. Leaf and Co. could state, and he believed that they did state, that they were not guilty, but "had been entrapped into this compromise." But it further appeared in the statement made by Messrs. Leaf and Co., that, after the Attorney General had made what he considered so good a bargain, the whole of the goods seized were, at the request, of the respectable house, actually returned to them, and these goods would now be thrown upon the market, without having paid the duty, greatly to the injury of the petitioners. This was an unintelligible fact, and he could not imagine what induced the right hon. the Vice-President of the Board of Trade to sanction that proceeding. If any doubt came across his mind, and those of his right hon. colleagues, as to the guilt of these parties, they should have directed a revision of the sentence of condemnation. If such a doubt existed, it was a complete answer to his motion; and the sooner the right hon. Gentleman signified the existence of such doubt to the House, the sooner this interruption of its other business would cease; but nothing, as far as he could understand, had yet been done in respect to any such revision of the case. They were told, indeed, that Messrs. Leaf and Co. asked for it; but not that it was granted. A great deal of discussion had taken place to-night with respect to the appointment of a Committee to consider the distress of the silk manufacturers generally. That was a subject on which he was not at present competent to decide, but he was convinced that nothing but the most rigid enforcement of the laws for securing the trade that protection which the laws promised it, could save the manufacturers from immediate destruction. He should abstain from anticipating that discussion which, he understood, was to take place on the subject of the distress of the silk trade; and, when it did come on, he should be ready to receive all the information that might be given upon that most important subject. He was perfectly certain, however, that the law, as at present administered, did not give adequate protection to our manufacturers. Whether it would do so, if strictly enforced, it was impossible for him to determine. Whoever looked at the public journals must be struck with the fact that smuggling was rapidly on the increase. They heard of continual accounts of seizures; perhaps he might be told, that all this was only a proof of increased vigilance. He knew not whether it were so; but he knew that the manufacturers thought the amount seized was nothing, compared with that which obtained illegal admission into the country. Indeed, the fact that any goods purchased on the continent might have their delivery insured to persons in this very town, for a premium, varying from eight to fifteen per cent, sufficiently established the fact, that the seizures were comparatively few. The right hon. the Vice-President of the Board of Trade smiled at this statement; but it was no subject of mirth to the starving silk-manufacturers. He did not mean to impute to the right hon. Gentleman, that he did not feel for their distress; but he thought that even their prejudices should, under all circumstances, be considered; but, instead of that, his Majesty's Government had outraged both their reason and their prejudices in the compromise they had made. From the returns upon the Table, it appeared that the contraband transactions of Messrs. Leaf and Co. commenced about the 12th of May last, and were regularly carried on every Thursday night, on which the moon did not happen to give too much light to render it dangerous to continue them, till the time of seizure. It was curious, too, that they were carried on through vessels anchored off the Custom House; and there could not be a doubt, from the statements of the witnesses, that these illegal dealings, on the nights upon which they were so carried on, were equal in extent to the lawful dealings of the day. This presumption was confirmed by the figures before the House—figures which ought to prevent the Government having any doubt on the subject. He held in his hand a statement of figures material in that point of view. They consisted of returns of duty paid by that house between the months of May and November. In the month of May the amount of duty paid was 1,711l. in June, it was 887l.; in July it had sunk down to 126l. The discovery was made in August, and in August the duty suddenly swelled up to 1,390l. A striking difference was also observable between the amount of the general duties received by Government on foreign manufactured silk, in the quarter ending on the 5th of July, 1831, and the quarter ending on the 10th of October, and was, in his opinion, a strong corroboration of the statement of the silk weavers, that a system of smuggling had been going on to a very considerable extent. In the quarter commencing on the 5th of April, and ending on the 5th of July, the general duties received by Government amounted to 39,648l.; and in the next quarter, in the early part of which the discovery of Messrs. Leaf and Co.'s transactions was made, the amount of duties increased to 50,932l.; being a difference of more than 10,000l. The hon. Gentleman concluded by moving for the following returns, in addition to the papers already on the Table:—"A copy of the information or process served upon Leaf and Co., and the proceedings thereon; a copy of the minute or order of the Treasury Board or Customs, directing the mode in which the goods seized were to be disposed of; a copy of the minute or orders of the Treasury Board or Customs, by virtue whereof the penalties were remitted; a copy of any correspondence which took place between the Treasury Board, Customs, or the Board of Trade, with respect to the seizure of the goods."

Ordered.