WAREHOUSING SYSTEM is a plan for lessening the pressure of excise or customs duties by postponing payment of them until the goods they are laid on pass to the con sumer, or, at all events, to the retail dealer. A merchant who might import a thousand pounds' worth of wine or tobacco, if he only paid duty on it by installments as it went out to the dealer, would be quite unable to import so much if he had to pay somewhere from one to five thousand pounds of duty on its arrival. The system of bonded ware houses was hence adopted. The taxable commodity thus came to be locked up in a government warehouse,' and the duty to be paid on its removal, along with a propor tional fee or rent for the custody of the article, or its accommodation in government premises. Bonding in this manner was part of the scheme of sir Robert Walpole, in 1733, generally known as the excise scheme, which was defeated from its unpopular ity. The system was first authorized by an act of George III. in 1802. When the customs laws were from time to time consolidated, the warehousing act formed a portion of the consolidation. In the consolidation of 1846 there was a separate "act for the warehousing of goods." In the latest consolidation of 1853 the warehousing
system is embodied in clauses 41 to 113 inclusive of the general "customs consolidation act" (16 and 17 Vict. c. 107). This process, by which the crown holds in custody the goods of private persons, has produced some curious effects on mercantile law and trad ing practices. When transactions have taken place about bonded goods, should they be injured or destroyed, it may come to be a question of nice adjustment who is to bear the loss, seeing there is not possession to show ownership; and still nicer questions some times.arise as to whether such goods are or are not part of a bankrupt estate. There is a difficulty in securing money upon goods without transferring their absolute possession, as in the case of pledging or pawning. The warehousing system, however, by retaining the goods for the owner, whoever he may be, has created a complete system of paper money in the transference of the title-deeds, as they maybe called, of such goods—the dock-warrants or other documents—the possession of which is equivalent to possession of the goods.