THE CANTERBURY TIMES THIS DAY. The Lyttelton Times. SATURDAY, JULY 8, 1865.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1426, 8 July 1865, Page 2

THE CANTERBURY TIMES THIS DAY. The Lyttelton Times. SATURDAY, JULY 8, 1865.

The Chamber of Commerce has taken a wise course in appealing at once to head quarters concerning the arbitrary change which has recently been introduced in the interpretation of the Customs tariff. The change has been a serious blow to trade. It is not only that an additional tax is levied upon the public for which they were not prepared. That has been done before, so recently as last December. But the change then made was done by the Legislature; there was a valid reason alleged for putting on the increased duties, namely, want of revenue ; and the new tariff was intelligible to all, for the same words were used and the same articles taxed as before, only the figures were increased. Therefore, though the public felt the new taxation, they did not openly complain. But now the change is of a different sort. In the first place, it is arbitrary; the Customs said one thing one day and the opposite thing the next. Whether the change is on the whole from right to wrong, or from wrong to wright, it is in fact an increase to the previous taxation, imposed at the discretion of the department, and not brought into force by the will of the Representatives. In the second place, the change is of a sweeping character ; it is not content with specifying certain articles which have hitherto been permitted to pass in free, and' are now found to be properly dutiable; but it casts the net of taxation over the whole sea of commerce, and makes a prize of everything; good, bad or indifferent, which may be found within its meshes. Again, it is obscure, and, from what we gather, kept so purposely. Importers do not know now what articles the Custom-house calls by a dutiable name —what, for instance, is included in " oilman's stores." The entries have to be made out by guess; and if they are wrong, have to be made out again, till knowledge is bought by costly experience. And besides, doubt hangs over all the operations of trade j goods cannot be safely ordered from abroad, or priced, or sold with satisfaction to both sides, while an important item of their cost remains unknown. This embarassment to commerces one of the greatest hardships whimi can be inflicted, and it is therefore one of the greatest fiscal blunders to cause it. We can well understand the vexation expressed by members of the Chamber of Commerce on this point; and we believe the feeling will he shared by the' Government when they come to learn the facts. But this is not all. The change is

arbitrary, sweeping, and obscure; but it might be all this, and yet in its nature reasonable and defensible. It might have been the case that some articles of luxury, capable of bearing taxation, and likely to produce a handsome addition to the revenue, were now to be brought for the first time within the meaning of the Customs Duties Act. But the case is absurdly otherwise. The obscurity before mentioned, which covers the new code, prevents us from declaring positively that no article whatever which ought reasonably to pay a Bhare of taxation has been fairly convicted of evading duty till now. The interpretation of the tariff hitherto used, whether strictly according to law or not, had at least this merit, that it endeavoured to distinguish between articles which would bear taxation and those which would not, wherever the law could be construed to leave a discretion in the interpreter. Up to this time the construction of the law has had the effect of somewhat modifying its hardships; it now endeavours to make the worst of them. Speaking generally, the change is found to affect all sorts of cheap and bulky necessaries of life, the very things which fiscal prudence would exempt from taxation, particularly under a tariff which imposes duty upon mere size and weight. And it must be borne in mind that the change is from one opinion of the Customs department to another. What was amiss before was the error of the Customs, not of the public; and the public are, therefore, less likely to believe in the correctness of the new view, and to bear with patience the penalty imposed for no fault of their own The Chamber of Commerce has, on all these grounds, a rational and strong case to show to the Commissioner of Customs on behalf of the mercantile community. It is a special feature in their case that the change has been made at a singularly inappropriate time, when the General Assembly is about to meet, with the avowed intention of re-considering the tariff as a whole. The confusion introduced by the late change is therefore a gratuitous injury to commerce, for no good will be got from it, nor will trade have time to right itself again, before the whole code will be re-adjusted by the Legislature. But in this point there is the one redeeming feature of the whole case. The interpretation now adopted will prove to the public in good time what can be done under the present law. -The amendments of the Customs Duties Act will not go merely to the faults perceptible under the easiest construction which could be given to it, but will search out those which the present experience—short, let us hope—of its harshest interpretation will have made clear.