The Public Sales at the Dock-yards and other Repositories, draw together men of loose and depraved morals; who, in order to obtain bargains, do not hesitate (wherever it can be done) to seduce, by means of pecuniary gratuities, the inferior officers and labourers into the evil practice of mixing superior stores with unserviceable articles, ordered to be made up in lots, so as to elude discovery. New and valuable cordage has been detected coiled within old cables,[75] while frauds also are practised as to the weight, and in the delivery of greater quantities than are actually sold.--Such practices have taken place in spite of the vigilance and attention of the superior officers, by which a two-fold mischief arises,--in the immediate loss which is sustained by the frauds thus practised, and in the cover which is thus afforded for the protection of additional stores purchased clandestinely; perhaps from the persons who have been thus corrupted.--An evil so prominent, in the view of a very able and penetrating Judge now upon the bench, as to induce him to declare publicly in Court, immediately after a trial, where a notorious offender (as many notorious offenders do) escaped Justice, under the cover of his certificates: "That _Government had better burn their old Stores than suffer them to be the means of generating so many offences_"--or to the same effect. [Footnote 75: An instance of this kind occurred about two years ago in one of the principal yards, where a large quantity of new and valuable Cordage was found concealed within the coils of a large unserviceable Cable; which composed one of the lots in the Catalogue of the Sale.--And thus a connection was discovered between the Criminal Purchaser and the Labourers employed in making up the Lots.] It is however humbly presumed that a remedy may be applied without the destruction of such valuable materials; and the following suggestions are offered with a view to this object. _Plan for an improved mode of disposing of unserviceable Naval and Victualing Stores._