RED TAPEISM.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2077, 20 October 1880, Page 2

RED TAPEISM.

The Melbourne " Daily Telegraph," in a recent commercial article, states that in a letter by the last mail, an Australian mill-owner, now in London, wrote to his firm in Melbourne respecting the sale of certain flour thus :—" The F—o lot was sold to F. and Co., biscuit makers, of 8., at 375, but a strange difficulty arose. The Customs would not allow delivery, because they said the word ' Oastlemaine ' on the bags was a contravention of the Customs Consolidated Act, which contains a clause to prevent foreigners using English names (the Germans having frequently done this). Oastlemaine,it appears, is some remote village or town in Ireland, in the bogs or mountains. J. and Co. had to petition the Board of Customs, and after some delay were permitted to print the word ' Australia' under ' Oastlemaine,' after which it was allowed to pass. It cost us the sale of the flour, owing to delivery not being made within two markets, as agreed. They even objected to the word Loddon, because it was so near to the word or looked like London." If the foregoing was not from a sober business letter, it might be regarded as an attempt at a joke. That Australians should be regarded as foreigners by their fellowcountrymen, and not allowed to use names of places in an English colony, is almost too absurd. We should imagine red-tapeism could go no further.