My Lords and Gentlemen,

In your capacity, as guardians of the public purse, I beg leave to bring under your notice a leak in the Revenue which exists at this port.

The amount I do not know, of course, but I take it to be several times the amount of the cost of the Viceregal establishment in Dublin. £300 per week is supposed to be about the amount of profit realized from it by one firm alone.

The modus operandi is this—and I acknowledge that in self-defence I have been compelled to become a participator in the matter— A dealer, or distiller, fills ten puncheons of whisky, or a hundred, or a thousand, and in the course of a few days the staves of the casks drink up about one gallon and a-half of proof spirit each, the duty on which amounts to fifteen shillings on each cask.

The dealer then sends a thousand empty puncheons to the bonded warehouse, and pumps into them the thousand puncheons whisky. These second thousand casks proceed to suck up each another gallon and a-half of whisky, and the operator, in the meantime, brings home the first thousand casks, pours into each of them a few gallons of boiling water (steam is better, and is used by the more scientific operators), and extracts the gallon and a-half of whisky free of duty. The strength of this spirit is then brought up by the addition of 65 over proof spirit,* and the amount of duty “saved” here is £750 on this one “operation,” and this is repeated ad infinitum.

I have myself “blended” (this operation is called “blending”) whisky down from 124°° to 109°°, thereby clearing £9 per puncheon, at the expense of the general tax payers of the community; and to stop this all that is requisite is an order that whisky shall be blended only once in the bonded stores.

I have the honour to be, | My Lords and Gentlemen, | Your most obedient servant, | J. TORBITT.

* in order to make it of saleable strength.

In relation to this. Sir Stafford Northcote was informed by the Customs that in the previous year £13.000 was lost in our warehouse, alone and it was a suppressio vere.¹ The firm alluded to (Dunville’s) cleared as they have admitted just double that per annum and they have now bought these landed estates.²

My gain was about £600 a year, but in consequence of cultivating the potato I was compelled give the whiskey to my Bankers and cease “blending”—³ I have not yet got much thanks for this saving to the people nor do I want any. J.T.