SHEEP HUSBANDRY IN THE SOUTH. 107 



But is it said that the 7-cent South American wool sold in our markets 

 in 1845 and 1846, was not all coarse that much of it was actually of a 

 superior quality 1 This is true. Many of the bales were partly made up 

 of an article ranging with American Merino and Saxony wools. But there 

 is little doubt that, to say the least of it, in very many such cases, if the in- 

 voice of the wool was not fraudulent, nominally, it was rendered so, in 

 reality, by a previous fraud. The modus operandi is said to have been as 

 follows : A sends his agent B to Buenos Ayres with instructions to pur- 

 chase the best lots of wool and pay their market price ; and he farther 

 gives him secret instructions to re-sell these wools to C (a second agent) 

 for 7 cents per pound, ostensibly in the ordinary course of business. The 

 second agent C is subsequently senfrout to buy, with no information of the 

 mission of his predecessor ; if he suspect the fraud, he has no direct knowl- 

 edge, of it, and having purchased wool for 7 cents which cost B 15 cents, he 

 can invoice it at the former rate and support the invoice by his oath. 



I have no direct proof of an instance of this species of fraud. The 

 commonness of such transactions, however, was claimed to be a matter 

 of perfect notoriety, by individuals who had investigated the subject. 

 Allegations of this kind have appeared again and again in the most 

 public manner, and I have yet to listen to the first denial of them, public 

 or private. Fraudulent invoices are no new thing in our commercial his- 

 tory,* and the great discrimination made by the Tariff of 1842, in the du- 

 ties on wool, offered the strongest temptations to them. The same kind 

 of fraud may be still practiced, but the inducement to risk seizure for un- 

 dervaluation is less where the diminution of duty is merely pro rata with 

 the diminution of cost, and where getting the latter invoiced at as low a 

 rate as 7 cents, is not followed, as before, by escape from a specific duty 

 and a sudden descent of Jive-sixths in the ad valorem one. 



I am free to confess, however, that it has always seemed to me that e 

 determination to vigorously and faithfully discharge their duty in tho 

 premises, with a competent practical knowledge of the quality of the arti- 

 cle, in the proper Custom-House officials, would always, in an unmanu- 

 factured staple, and one so readily classified and valued as wool, be a suf- 

 ficient safeguard against fraudulent undervaluation, to any extent, in the 

 invoice. They might perhaps be undervalued one or two cents on the 

 pound, without making a case strong and obvious enough to justify ap- 

 praisers in legalizing a seizui-e ; but it is not for gains like these that per- 

 juries would be ventured upon, or double agents and other expensive ar- 

 rangements for the perpetration of more roundabout frauds, be found 

 profitable. 



Not having room, within the limits of this letter, to discuss the capa- 

 bilities of the Old World to compete with us in wool growing, I will 

 reserve that subject for my next. 



If any one dreams they are, let him read a speech on the Tariff made by Mr. Buchanan in the U. 9 

 in lB<2another by Mr. Webster on ad valorem duties, made in the same body July 5, 1846, &c. 



