Southern planter : devoted to agriculture, horticulture, and the ...

592 THE SOUTHERNT PLANTER.
for be its intents wicked or charitable, the pub-
lic looks only to results.
But concede that this motive of compulsion
actuates the merchant ; he now sells three
fourths of the tobacco, and wants the rest. But
as by the argument of the Bush and Briery
Club, he lowers the price of the whole, and
therefore must drive a part elsewhere, he is
adopting a policy which gives him but few
more, if any additional customers, and less
commissions out of those he keeps. Their argument
then would not only convict the mer-
chants of trickery, but of folly in that busi-
ness which has been the study of their lives.
Of other objections to the new arrangement
we can recall but one that we deem worthy of
notice, and that is that the buyers cannot now
see the tobacco as it is broke ;
to which the an-
swer is that except to a certain extent we be-
lieve they never did see it. This morning, for
instance, June 16th, the breaks commenced at
Public Warehouse at 6.} o'clock, A. M. We
would like to know how many buyers had
shaved themselves by that hour. When seve-
ral hundred hogshead are broke each day, it
is an impossibility for one man, or one house
to witness the breaks, however desirable it may
be ; and as the trade increases, if it shall in-
crease, it will be still more beyond their ability
to do it. We do not believe it is necessary,
but if it be, it is either a reflection on the Plan-
ter's skill, or a stigma on his integrity, which,
be it one or both, we would advise him to remove
with all possible dispatch. If it be in-
dispensible to watch them, it can be done for
the future as it has been done in the past, by
agfents whom the buyers keep in their pay for
that purpose.
One other point, and we have done. The in-
spector's duties are either worthless or valua-
ble ; and they are laborious if he discharges
them. If they are worthless, then the office
is a tax, and ought to be abolished. If they
tor's time which will interfere with their dis-
charge is " an invasion of the rights of the
Planter." Now our friends of the Bush and
Briery Club think "the present S3^stem" of in-
spections " has operated well from the foundation
of the government." But at the same
and advocate a policy, to wit : the encouragement
of sales by the inspector, which would
defeat it altogether. In his speech at the
" meeting of the tobacco merchants" on the
22nd of May last, Mr. McDearmon said " he
and his brother Inspectors represented at least
one fourth of the Planters who send their tobacco
to this market." One fourth of his own
inspections is at least four thousand hogsheads,
and he probably sells five thousand, to say
nothing of loose tobacco, equal to at least one
thousand more. Now six thousand hogsheads
is the maximum sales of the largest commis-
sion house in Richmond, and it takes more than
half the time of that firm, and the services of
several clerks, to attend to the business. Can
the Inspector do the same amount of work
and attend to his own official duties be-
sides? lie cannot. Is not this then an offer
of five thousand dollars to him to neglect his
legitimate business ?
But our friends of Bush and Briery invade
not less the rights of the merchants, who ought
to have some rights in another way. An In-
spector is an officer of the law, sworn to decide
impartially between certain parties. But they
make him one of those parties, and give him
interests which destroy, or tend to destroy, his
impartiality, and to that extent destroy his use-
fulness ; they make him a factor for a fixed
compensation, and therefore a commission merchant,
not only against the very policy which
created his office, but in evasion of the Reve-
nue laws of the State, which require a merchant
to pay a tax on a license to trade. He
trades but pays no tax : and this is not only an
invasion but an outrage on the rights of others.
If he be within the letter of the law, the law is
a blot upon the statute book ; if he be without
the letter of the law, our friends encourage him
to break or evade it. Our friends then of Bush
and Briery hold this alternative, either that a
useless office shall be continued that they may
are valuable, then they ought to be dis- have the advantage of sales at less than the
charged : and any employment of an inspec- regular commissions, or that they shall have
for a small consideration the benefit of services
already pledged to the public for a very large
time they do all in their power to impede it, a previous occasion spoken fully on the first,
one.
Of the policy of the Inspection laws we have
nothing to say ;
nor of the mode in which the
Inspectors discharge their duties. We have on