Customs house

“ By the late act, the officers of the customs are “impowered to enter into any house, warehouse, shop, cellar, or other place, in the British colonies or plantations in America, to search for or seize prohibited or unaccustomed goods,” &c. ”

“ This the official chalked.
"So this is one of the habits of the English," cried the foreigner, bitterly.
"Not only the habits, Monsieur," observed a bystander, who trembling with apprehension, was waiting his turn; "but the customs. Customs that are out of date with the age. Customs that are contrary to the spirit of the century. Customs that cost more than they yield, and deserve to be cussed!"
"They do," cried the foreigner, excitedly. "May the Customs be—"
"You must not utter that word," interrupted the Revenue Officer, in a tone of peremptory command.
"It is British; why not?" ”

“ The common people, who went up into the interior to trade, fell in with their customs with a degree of plasticity and an air of gaiety and full assent, which no other foreigners have, at least to the same extent, shown. ”

“ If he has to do carrying service for the lord, he has to do carrying service (avera) for the sheriff also or in lieu thereof to pay a small sum of money [297] . And another aspect of this word consuetudo is interesting to us. Land that is burdened with customs is customary land (terra consuetudinaria) [298] . As yet this term does not imply that the tenure, though protected by custom, is not protected by law; there is no opposition between law and custom; the customary tenant of Domesday Book is the tenant who renders customs, and the more customs he renders the more customary he is [299] . ”

“ The settlers in the United States brought with them many of their old-world customs and some of these early customs relating to land seem to us now most curious. Society has ever been influenced by the manner of holding, transferring, and inheriting land, and this all the more in a new country and especially where greatly influenced by customs and laws transferred from other countries. ”

“ Before proceeding to describe the methods of cultivation employed, it is desirable to glance at a custom which, there is reason to suppose, is connected with that remote period when the English were not de jure masters of the soil, but occupied the position of colonists, who either expropriated the original inhabitants or entered upon possession of land as res nullius, to which they had established no solid claim by prescription. ”

“ According to colonial custom there is little or no privacy, no private sitting-rooms, and if a visitor have a bedroom to himself, it is not quite such a sanctum as it would be in Britain. People stopping in the house are free to permeate it from kitchen to attic, if so minded. ”

“ Other nations leave the trade of their colonies free to all their subjects, who may carry it on from all the different ports of the mother country, and who have occasion for no other license than the common despatches of the custom-house. ”

“ All merchants may enter or leave England unharmed and without fear, and may stay or travel within it, by land or water, for purposes of trade, free from all illegal exactions, in accordance with ancient and lawful customs. ”

“ If we compare these customs with those of Germany, or particularly in the North, where you must often wait whole hours to change horses, in a dirty room, heated by an iron stove, the smell of which is suffocating; or even those of France, where the most part of the post-houses, not being Inns, have no accommodation for travellers, it is evident that the advantage is not in favour of the Continent. ”

“ The Truly Sacred Lord who has established the Divine Dynasty, has also established custom-houses wherever the country is quiet, and by his law all merchants who pass these must pay the regular duties, and your merchant in daring to force his way through and evade the payment of customs, and you in coming here and making a disturbance and squeezing the money back, have behaved in a manner at utter variance with propriety.... ”

“ All customs, be they old or new, are no other but the effects and issues of trades and commerce with foreign nations; but all commerce and affairs with foreigners ... are made by the absolute power of the king ”

“ Great numbers of foreigners and people from the provinces visited the capital, and the return of luxury and the revival of old customs gave occupation to a variety of tradespeople who could get no employment under the Directory or Consulate, such as saddlers, carriage-makers, lacemen, embroiderers, and others. ”

“ Similarly, the local customs which have survived on many manors, and in some cases in wide districts, are but legal curiosities until they are compared with similar systems of local jurisprudence elsewhere, in the Continental countries from which our remote fore-fathers came. ”

“ There is a Bund, and along and behind it is the foreign settlement, occupied by about forty Europeans. The white buildings of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs, the houses [Pg 187] of the staff, the hongs of two or three foreign merchants, and the British Consular buildings, may be said to constitute the settlement. ”

“ There are also many native customs according to which civil matters have to be settled, as the inhabitants would consider themselves wronged if the European laws be applied to them, and it would be the cause of disturbances in the country. ”

“ It is easy to gain a definite notion of the furnishing of colonial houses from a contemporary and reliable source—the inventories of the estates of the colonists. ”

“ But the tradition of unified Customs, now nearly a century old, has immense potency, and unless it is fearlessly scrutinized and challenged, may be able, reinforced by the passions excited by the great controversy over Free Trade and Protection, to defy the warnings writ large upon the page of history. ”

“ Customary Law consisteth of certain laudable customs used in some private country, intended first to begin upon good and reasonable considerations, as gavelkind, which is all the male children equally to inherit, and continued to this day in Kent, where it is only to my knowledge retained, and nowhere else in England. ”

“ Moreover, the rules of the custom-houses of our Divine Kingdom permit the merchants and people of all places, and those who still shave their heads, to pass to and fro, and trade in salt and other goods on payment of the duties that are defined by regulation. ”

“ They labour in the fields, or in making bricks, or at manufactures in the house, under the superintendence of an inspector. Each colonist is furnished with a book, in which is entered the work executed daily, the amount of food and clothes furnished, his share of the general expenses of the establishment, and whatever he has received in the paper-money of the colony. ”

“ Every necessary trade was taught, and the boys were taken to the public workshops and instructed in such trades as they chose. To every family was given a house, and a piece of ground sufficient to supply it with all necessaries. ”

“ We have here an all-sufficient foundation of the right of the crown to regulate commerce among the colonies, and of the right of the colonists to inhabit and to inherit land in each and all the colonies. ”

“ When such duties are imposed, not according to the bulk or weight, but according to the supposed value of the goods, they become properly a sort of inland customs or excise, which obstruct very much the most important of all branches of commerce, the interior commerce of the country. ”

“ An investment of property in France for agricultural pursuits, has been very warmly recommended by some, who, it is more than probable, have never lived in that country, and are strangers to its manners, its views, and its laws; for it is unlikely that an Englishman can be pleased with the effeminate manners which so peculiarly distinguish a native of France, or that he who properly estimates his rights, his privileges, and his liberty, can, even in imagination, consent to live in a country, where he cannot travel from one town to another without a passport. ”

“ But in more modern ages, the spirit of violence being in some measure, if the expression may be allowed, sheathed in commerce, colonies have been settled by the nations of Europe for the purposes of trade. ”

“ They become the more difficult of solution, considering the difference in the customs prevailing in different parts of the country — nay, as we find even in the same part of the country such a wide divergence of customs among different castes and families. ”

“ The American Consular Agent is an Arab, who can speak a little broken English. The ladies of these families were all either Syrian or Greek, but they most of them spoke Italian, and welcomed me into their circle with graceful cordiality. Two other families, of French extraction, engaged in commerce, completed the European colony of Hâifa. Their houses were built in Oriental fashion, round courts, some of which were paved with black and white marble. The rooms were furnished with Turkish divans, French mirrors, consoles, and pictures. ”

“ I and the other gentlemen here represent the Colonization Board. We've interceded with the local authorities in order to offer you a choice. We would like to ship you out to the colony planets. Naturally, we will pay you the standard emigration bonus of five hundred dollars. The colonists need wives; they offer you—security. ”

“ Customs of residence are no guide to the principles on which descent is regulated. Consequently it is entirely erroneous to import into the discussion with which we are concerned, viz. the rules by which kinship is determined, any considerations based on the rules by which membership of a tribe is settled. ”

“ For the future, will your Majesty please order that a sum sufficient for its needs be paid from the treasury, and that those Indians be apportioned to the royal crown. We need also another house for convalescents where they may be compelled to follow a certain diet, such as a bit of fowl. When I find a little leisure from so many toils, I will build such a house, and establish suitable rules regarding the food. Thus, besides the service of God, many can be supplied with food, by means of the person who conducts the house. ”

“ However necessary it might have been for the first settlers to take out with them every article which they might require on their arrival or location, the emigrant must remember that an ample supply of goods has been brought into the Colony, and consequently he will find it answer his purpose better to keep far the greater part of his money in his pocket, and on his arrival at the Settlement, he can purchase what he wants, and as he wants them. ”

“ A gentleman sends me a scheme of a cooperative home colony, which will give the settlers three good meals a day, a house, a full suit of clothing every year, education for their children, and an allotment of half an acre of land, which shall be entirely at the disposal of the head of the family so long as he makes a good use of it and renders p. 211proper service during the regular working hours. ”

“ Every colonist had a right to inhabit, if he pleased, in any other colony, and as a British subject he was capable of inheriting lands by descent in every other colony. The commercial intercourse of the colonies too was regulated by the general laws of the British empire, and could not be restrained or obstructed by colonial legislation. ”

“ And We do, by the Advice of Our Privy Council, declare and enjoin, that the Trade with the said Indians shall be free and open to all our Subjects whatever; provided that every Person, who may incline to trade with the said Indians, do take out a Licence for carrying on such Trade from the Governor or Commander in Chief of any of Our Colonies respectively, where such Person shall reside ”

“ At the same time, this kingdom, as the supreme governing and legislative power, has always bound the colonies by her laws, by her regulations, and restrictions in trade, in navigation, in manufactures, in every thing, except that of taking their money out of their pockets without their consent. ”

“ The customs inward of all commodities are ten in the hundred, and the custome is paid in wares also that you buy: for the same wares in barter you pay also ten in the hundred, at the lading of the wares. [Marginal note: Other smal customs you pay besides, which may be at two in the hundred: and for Consulage you pay two in the hundred.] But if you sell for mony, you pay no more custome but the ten aforesaid, and one and a halfe in the hundred, which is for the custome of the goods you lade for the sayd mony, for more custome you pay not. ”

“ It is also the desire of the colonists generally, and the recommendation of a committee of the Legislative Council, that every such emigrant should also be allowed a certain drawback from the purchase-money of his land, to cover the expense of his passage out. ”

“ There are some exceptions, but I have most frequently observed in the houses of Europeans married to native women in the provinces, that the wives make the kitchen their chief abode, and are only seen by the visitor when some domestic duty requires them to move about the house. ”

“ The health of foreign residents, the security of their property, and the very tenability of the place as a foreign location, alike render it imperative that a jurisdiction of some kind should be promptly and energetically asserted. ”

“ The English Consulate looks out over the Bund, but it is such a different Bund to the usual one of handsome houses and gardens touching the water's edge. This one is piled up with merchandise; great bales of goods, covered with matting, are stacked under the trees or strewn about the ground, and through the wide-opened windows come all day the shouts and cries of the strong-limbed coolies, as they lade and unlade the ships. A strange silence falls over the busy scene of the day, at night. ”