MERCANTILE HONOR.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4454, 29 June 1875, Page 3

MERCANTILE HONOR.

The Melbourne Argus of the ISth June tells the following pretty story:—" A few months ago a highly respectable Melbourne merchant had occasion to enter into business relations, for the first time, with an apparently equally respectable London merchant. The first sent an experimental order to the second for a few hundred pounds' worth of goods, and these arrived at our port in clue time, and in good condition. But there was a certain eccentricity about the accompanying invoices. Two invoices were sent, one representing the actual value of the goods, and the amount that had to be remitted, the other being intended for Customhouse purposes, and representing exactly half the amount of the genuine document. The duty on the goods mentioned in the true and the false invoices is 20 per cent., and if our Melbourne merchant had been sufficiently elastic of conscience to use the false one, he would have received his goods by paying to the Government 10 per cent, on their real value. But he happened to be one of those impracticable kind of people who jib at perjury, and he paid the full duty on his importation, though, in doing so, he destroyed his opportunity to compete successfully with less scrupulous respectable merchants in the same line of business. No doubt all this is due, primarily, to our own empirical fiscal legislation ; but we think there is at the same time some ground for complaint against the highly respectable British merchant. Why should he, of his own motion, send out fraudulent invoices to Melbourne, in order to cheat the Victorian Customhouse ? The fact that he did so uninvited points to the conclusion that the practice is not uncommon* and seems to imply that our import duties are systematically evaded. But it also goes to show that the British merchant, exemplar as he is of all that iB blunt, honest, and straightforward (in novels and comedies), is sometimes quite as capable of a little sharp practice as anybody else when favorable opportunities present fchftmaelves."