andise is landed at a port of the United States to be
forwarded in bond to another port therein. Full effect should be given
to section 3102 as to merchandise imported into the United States from
Canada, so far as the appropriations enable the Treasury to provide the
officers to do the work of closing and sealing. It will, however, be
required that all this kind of work be done, and carefully done, by
an officer of the United States, and that the duty shall in no case
be delegated to the employees of the transportation companies. The
considerations that it is quite doubtful whether a fraud committed in
Canada by one of our agents upon our revenue would be punishable in our
courts, and that such a fraud committed by anyone else certainly would
not be, and that even if such acts are made penal by our statutes
the criminal would be secure against extradition, seem to me to be
conclusive against the policy of attempting to maintain such revenue
agents in Canadian territory.

I come now to discuss another element of this international traffic,
namely, the transportation of merchandise from one "port" in the United
States to another "port" therein over the territory of Canada. This
traffic is enormous in its dimensions, and very great interests have
grown up in the United States in connection with it. Section 3006
authorizes this traffic, subject to "such rules, regulations, and
conditions as the Secretary of the Treasury may prescribe;" but the
important limitation is from "port" to "port." Section 3007 of the
Revised Statutes, which exempts sealed cars from certain fees, preserves
the terms of the preceding section--from "port" to "port." It seems to
me that sections 3006 and 3007 contemplate the delivery of the sealed
cars at a "port" of the United States, there to be examined by a revenue
officer and their contents verified; but in practice the car, if the
seal is found at the border to be intact, is passed to places not
"ports" and is opened and unloaded by the consignee, no officer being
present. The bill or manifest accompanying the merchandise and the
unbroken seal on the car may furnish _prima facie_ evidence that the
amount and kind of merchandise named in the manifest and said to be
contained in the car came from a port in the United States, but
certainly it was not intended that the merchandise should go to the
owner without an official ascertainment of the correspondence between
the bill and the actual contents o