The confined state of these Quays, (r) has been long complained of as a grievance, and seems to have operated powerfully in promoting the efforts which have been, at length, successfully used in obtaining Legislative authority to construct Wet Docks.

It may be stated, on the authority of the evidence delivered before the Committee of the House of Commons in 1796, that some of the Wharfingers, having a joint right in the Quays and Warehouses, will sometimes not permit goods to be landed on their Wharfs, unless they also derive the additional benefit arising from the same goods being deposited

(r) See a Plan for improving these Quays, in the Second Report of the Select Committee on the Port of London, 1799.

in their Warehouses. Acting under the shortsighted impulses of immediate gain, they have sometimes grasped at the possession of more goods than they could store in places of security: The result has been that perishable commodities, have remained in the Craft, or upon the Wharfs, exposed to the injuries of the weather, and generally to very excessive plunder.

In addition however to these Legal Quays, relief has been occasionally afforded to the Trade of the Port through the medium of Sufferance Wharfs. Although these Wharfs have generally been allotted to the East Country and the Coasting Trade, permission has also been granted to land Sugars and Foreign Articles at them; and particularly in the years 1793 and 1799, when the arrival of several Fleets at the same time occasioned an uncommon press of business.

Five of these Sufferance Wharfs are situated on the North side of the River, between the Tower and Hermitage Dock; the remainder, 18 in number, are of larger dimensions, but they are all situated on the Surry side. The whole compose a frontage of 3676 feet upon the River.(r)

The detached, and, in some respects, the remote situation of the Sufferance Wharfs, with various other inconveniences with regard to the Warehouses, render them but an indifferent succedaneum; and the hazard of loss by plunder, has been found to be, in many respects, much increased by this alternative.

(r) See the following page for an account of the Wharfs.

PUBLIC FOREIGN SUFFERANCE WHARFS, within the limits set out by the COMMISSIONERS of the CUSTOMS, and particularly specified and decreed by them to be PUBLIC WHARFS, on the 13th of May, 1789.

[From the Second Report of the Select Committee, upon the Improvements of the Port of London, page 134; Appendix, (C4)]

V. WAREHOUSES FOR THE ACCOMMODATION

OF MERCHANDISE.

The Warehouses for the accommodation of Merchandise are numerous, and some of those belonging to the East-India Company, are splendid and commodious in the highest degree. Their goods are carted to these Warehouses from their own Quays, where they are deposited under the care of Revenue Officers, specially appointed, as the duties are never paid until the goods are delivered after a Sale takes place; a privilege which could not fail to give an inconceivable spring to Commercial pursuits if extended to all the other great branches of Trade.

The Warehouses at the Legal Quays, where Sugars and other West-India commodities are generally landed, are not equal to the accommodation of more than 32,000 hhds. of Sugar: Those at the Sufferance Wharfs, if not occupied with other goods, would contain 60,000 more; (s) but as they are generally allotted for other Merchandize, and as it frequently happens, especially during war, that of an importation of 150,000 hhds. in the course of six months, 120,000 will arrive in three; the consequences have been that Sugars, and other valuable commodities, have been piled upon the Quays six or eight hogsheads high.

Under such circumstances, previous to the establishment of the Marine Police Office, the property

(5) See Table of Sufferance Wharfs, page 32.

of the Planters and Merchants became a prolific harvest to the hordes of plunderers who work upon the River, and prowl about the Wharfs. - The Ships and Lighters also became temporary warehouses, equally the objects of pillage, and daily and nightly depredations, to an extent that exceeds all credibility; while those to whom the protection of the property was then committed were themselves, in many instances, most deeply implicated in the villainy.

But the evil was by no means confined to depredations committed on merchandise thus exposed. The loose system which then pervaded, and it is to be feared still pervades, the interior of the Warehouses, is productive of much abuse and no little peculation, of which more will be stated in its proper place.

Having thus followed the Navigation and Commerce of the River Thames regularly through all its stages, in which information or specific detail, as to the extent and magnitude of both, or to the economy of the System at large, appeared to be useful and interesting, it now remains to take a general view of the advantages derived by the State from the

REVENUE OF THE PORT OF LONDON.

In a Work of this nature, minute or elaborate investigations as to the importance of the Trade of the Port of London, as a great and prolific source of Revenue, are needless. -The fact is admitted, and appears evident from the details which have been already