QUANTITIES of the several ARTICLES CHARGED with DUTIES of EXCISE, and free of DUTY; the QUANTITIES EXPORTED; and the QUANTITIES RETAINED for CONSUMPTION in the UNITED KINGDOM, in the YEAR ended 31st DECEMBER, 1859.

AN ACCOUNT of the GROSS and NET PRODUCE of the DUTIES of CUSTOMS, in the YEAR ended 31st DECEMBER, 1859.

AN ACCOUNT of the GROSS AMOUNT produced by CUSTOMS DUTIES upon the PRINCIPAL ARTICLES of FOREIGN and COLONIAL MERCHANDISE, in the YEAR ended 31st DECEMBER, 1859.

CLOTHING DEPOTS.

Report of the Commissioners to inquire into the State of the Store and Clothing Depôts at Weedon, Woolwich and the Tower.

THE Commission was issued on the 14th July, 1858, to James Aspinall Turner, Esq., Colonel Henry John French, and Henry Selfe, Esq. The Commissioners examined 131 witnesses and sat thirty-six days, and on the 29th July, 1859, reported as follows:

Weedon.-Up to the year 1854 the clothing of the army was supplied to each regiment by a clothier chosen by the colonel of the regiment, who paid for it out of a sum allowed to him for the purpose, called "off reckonings." The standard patterns to regulate all supplies were kept at the Consolidated Clothing Board of General Officers in London, whence sealed patterns annually sent by the clothier with the clothing to each regiment were obtained. Before any supply was sent away it was inspected by military officers appointed by the Commander-in-Chief. On the 6th June, 1854, a royal warrant was signed, providing that the colonels should for the future receive a fixed annual allowance in lieu of deriving any pecuniary emolument as theretofore from the off-reckonings, and directing that the clothing, accoutrements, &c., should still be provided by the colonels, the public only paying the cost price of such articles, the payment to be made under such regulations as the Secretary-at-War should afterwards determine. And on the 6th June, 1855, an Order in Council was passsed, regulating the establishment of the Civil Department of the army. On the 21st June, 1855, two royal warrants were signed, one abolishing the Consolidated Board of General Officers, and directing that the duties connected with the clothing of the army, theretofore performed by that Board, should in future be performed by the director-general of army clothing, the right being reserved to your Majesty of determining from time to time the patterns of clothing, &c. The other warrant directed that the clothing, accoutrements, and appointments of the army should in future be provided in such manner and under such regulations as should from time to time be determined upon by your Majesty's authority, signified by one of the principal Secretaries of State. The engagements already entered into by the colonels of the respective corps were to be taken over by the public. Regulations were accordingly issued for the provision of clothing, &c., for the army, and subject to the existing engagements entered into by the colonels (which included the clothing for 1856-7), it was determined by Lord Panmure, then Secretary of State for War, that for the future, i.e. for the supplies for 1857-58, the clothing for the army should be purchased by Government after open competition by tenders from persons willing to contract; that, as a general rule, the lowest tenders should be accepted, and that the quality of the supplies furnished should be subject to the inspection and approval of civilians specially appointed for that duty. It was also determined that separate contracts should be entered into, not only for the several articles of which a soldier's dress and equipment are composed, but also for the cloth required, and for the making the cloth up into garments.

The first director-general of stores, under the Order in Council of 6th June, 1855, was Mr. Godley, who held that office till June, 1857, when he became Assistant Under-Secretary for War. The first director-general of contracts was Mr. Howell, who still fills that office. The first director

general of army clothing was Sir Thomas Troubridge, who was appointed to that office in June, 1855, and retained it till 2nd February, 1857. A memorandum, dated 7th July, 1855, was approved by the Secretary of State, which stated the duties of the clothing department to be-1. To ascertain the wants of the army; 2. To obtain through the director of stores the supplies, and to order their delivery either at Weedon for home issue, or in Mark Lane for issue abroad; 3. To inform the storekeeper that the articles had been ordered, and to direct him to issue them when received. In February, 1857, Sir Thomas Troubridge was removed to the Horse Guards, being appointed deputy adjutant-general, the officer in immediate connection with the War Department in relation to the patterns of clothing, and who is responsible for the quality of every article of soldiers' clothing on which he puts his seal. All patterns are furnished wholly by the adjutant-general, subject to the sanction of the Secretary of State for War, and are kept in the charge of a pattern keeper at Pall Mall. The first assistant director-general of army clothing was Mr. Ramsay, who almost exclusively conducted that business. In February, 1857, when Sir Thomas Troubridge became deputy adjutant-general, the whole establishment was revised. Captain Caffin succeeded Sir Thomas Troubridge with the title of director of stores and clothing. Mr. Ramsay was styled assistant director of stores and clothing, but was more especially charged with the clothing branch of the department, over which Captain Caffin had only a general superintendence.

In November, 1855, Weedon was established by Lord Panmure as a depôt for army clothing and necessaries. The reasons which determined the choice of this locality were the saving of expense as to buildings (large barracks well adapted for storehouses being unoccupied there), and the ready access to it both by canal and railway. It was, however, strongly objected to both by Sir T. Troubridge and Mr. Ramsay, on account of its distance from head-quarters, and the consequent difficulty of exercising proper supervision over it.

The delivery of stores at Weedon from the Tower and other places commenced in November, 1855. These were placed temporarily in the charge of Mr. Cooper. On the 1st December, 1855, Mr. James Sutton Elliott was appointed by Lord Panmure to the post of principal military storekeeper at the Weedon depôt, with a salary of 800l. per annum. acknowledged on all hands to have been a clever and able officer.

He is

Upon going to Weedon, he was supplied by the War Office with books and store vouchers in the forms prescribed, and in his evidence before the Committee on Contracts he stated, that "the system pursued at Weedon was as nearly approaching the ordnance system as it could be, considering the great difference in the service." It is clear that in one respect the ordnance regulations were necessarily inapplicable. There was, strictly speaking, no store of clothing at Weedon, whereas the regulations direct that a store shall be kept up. It was originally intended to have had a two years' store of clothing, but financial reasons and the emergencies of a state of war prevented that intention being carried into effect.

It devolved upon Mr. Elliott, on his arrival at Weedon, on the 7th December, 1855, to organize the establishment, taking the ordnance regulations as his basis, and to initiate a system of book-keeping. We are desirous to keep our account of the system of book-keeping adopted, as far as possible distinct from the narrative of the general mode in which the

business was conducted; but it is, perhaps, hardly possible entirely to dissever the two subjects. To make either intelligible, it may be convenient to proceed, in the first instance, chronologically with the history of the establishment.

No books whatever had been kept previous to Mr. Elliott's arrival,—the only records of the stores previously received at the depôt being the bills of delivery from the storekeeper's office at the Tower, Woolwich, and other military establishments, in respect of goods sent from those departments, and inspection notes, which accompanied the delivery of goods furnished by contractors. For the accounts which Mr. Elliott had to keep, and the correspondence he had to conduct, he was for the first five months after his arrival supplied with only five temporary clerks, "necessarily very young men, with no experience," all perfectly ignorant of the duties of an ordnance station, and only one of whom afterwards passed his examination. Mr. Elliott's own statement is, and we believe it to be true, that seeing the utter impossibility of establishing so large a system of book-keeping as he would have done with more ample means, the utmost he could do was to subdivide his duties into several branches,-the saddlery branch, the boot branch, the cloth branch, and the garniture branch, and to direct the foreman in each of these branches to keep an account of the daily receipts and issues. He then "started a ledger as well as he could, in the roughest possible way, and set a clerk to work upon it." The number of clerks was gradually increased. In July, 1856, there were eight clerks. In November, 1856, they consisted of eleven; and in March, 1857, in consequence Mr. Elliott's urgent representation of the necessity of further clerical assistance, three additional temporary clerks were added. These, fourteen in all, constituted the book-keeping establishment until September, 1857-a number wholly inadequate to the rapidly increasing duties which they had to perform.

of

Besides the rapid despatch of troops to China and India in the spring and summer of 1857, nearly 50,000 men were added to the army between January, 1857, and May, 1858, and 30,000 embodied militia were called out in the course of the same year 1857. This last measure alone doubled in one week the work at Weedon. On the 1st of September, 1857, four clerks were added to the office, and shortly afterwards, Mr. Tatum, an experienced military storekeeper, with an assistant, Mr. Munro, were added to Mr. Elliott's staff. By this time, considerable arrears existed in the books, and upon a representation of Mr. Tatum, strongly backed by Mr. Elliott, of the necessity for further assistance, both in the store and book-keeping department, six clerks and four persons intended to act as storeholders were sent down in October, but none of the latter being conversant with the issue or management of stores, Mr. Elliott appropriated all ten to the book-keeping department, the duties of which were largely increasing.

According to the Ordnance regulations, the store ledger of every station is made up to the 31st March in each year, and should be ready for transmission to the War Office within four months after the expiration of the financial year. It was not considered necessary that Mr. Elliott should transmit the ledger made up to the 31st March, 1856, when he had been less than four months at Weedon. His first ledger, therefore, comprised a period of sixteen months ending on the 31st March, 1857, and would have been due at the War Office not later than the 1st of August, 1857. It did