Enclosure: Memorandum on Guerlain’s Case, 30 October 1805
Enclosure: Memorandum on Guerlain’s Case
Guerlain’s case
He imports & enters at New Orleans a cargo rated by his
| invoice at | Stg. | 8,764. 8.8 |
| charges other than freight & insurance | 372. 6.6 | |
| £ | 9,136.15.2 |
The invoice was made and signed by himself, as being shipped by him at London; and, on being applied for the original invoices or bills of sale signed by the merchants & manufacturers in England, he replied that he had thrown them over board from fear of the French cruizers. He also voluntarily declared that sd. invoice was made from memoranda respecting the course of the different manufacturers; which is tantamount to a declaration that sd. invoice was not transcribed from the true original invoices or bills of sale. The collector thereon seized the goods; and, Mr Guerlain having refused to concur in an apraisement, appointed
The difference between the appraisement & Mr Guerlain’s invoice is therefore
| either | Stg. | 1,698.7.7. | = | Drs | 7,548.45 | = | fraud | of ⅙ |
| or | " | 1,326.1.1. | = | " | 5,893.57 | = | " | of ⅛ |
| In the first case, supposing the duties to have averaged 16⅔ p% which is nearly the fact, the fraud on the revenue would have been | |||
| (including the addit. 10 p% for freight & insurance) | Drs. | 1,383.88/100 | |
| In the second case, the fraud on the revenue would have amounted to only | " | 1,080.48/100 | |
The whole cargo has been condemned by the district judge; and a petition for remission is presented under the statute.
Mr Guerlain urges
1. that the appraisers were not competent to the task; that his purchases being for cash were considerably lower than those gentlemen have supposed; and that in some instances, ribbons particularly, they have far overrated the articles, having valued them even beyond the credit prices.
2. that the amount of which it is presumed he wanted to defraud the revenue being but 1100 or at most less than 1400 dollars, it is absurd to suppose that he would for the sake of that sum have risked a cargo worth in New Orleans from fifty to sixty thousand dollars
3. that that supposition is still more forcibly repelled by the fact that he intended to re-export the greater part of the cargo, in which case, as he would have received the drawback, he had no interest to diminish the amount of duties. He supports this assertion by Mr Merieult’s (his consignee) declaration, and also by an affidavit taken at Havannah subsequent to the condemnation—See both—
But Mr Guerlain does not account satisfactorily for his destroying the original bills of sale, nor for making his invoice from an arbitrary rule which he calls the course of manufactures. The evidence of the appraisers seems also to prove (tho’ they may have committed partial mistakes) that they were competent and have rated the goods at the lowest rates.
Upon the whole it appears to me that there is strong ground to believe that a fraud was intended, tho’ it does not amount to a complete demonstration; but that the penalty incurred is greater than the offence deserves.
The question is whether that penalty be sufficient both as it relates to the offender, to the example, and to the reward due to the custom house officers—
MS (DLC: TJ Papers, 155:27122-3); undated; entirely in Gallatin’s hand.
The case involved a cargo landed at New Orleans in the ship Lewis William in January 1805. As Gallatin noted, the cargo’s owner, Lewis H. Guerlain, had destroyed the original invoices and substituted his own valuation. After receiving information “that some deception was intended in the entry of these goods,” William Brown, the collector, seized the cargo under section 66 of the 1799 collection law, which authorized seizure in cases where goods were entered with questionable or fraudulent invoices. Because a U.S. attorney was not present in New Orleans at the time, Brown informed Gallatin that he consulted “the best counsel that I could obtain” before libeling Guerlain’s cargo (Brown to Gallatin, 4 Feb. 1805, in DNA: RG 56, Correspondence of the Secretary of the Treasury with Collectors of Customs, New Orleans; , 1:627, 677; TJ to Gallatin, 6 Nov.).