One of the nuisances of travelling throughout the world is the ordeal of passing the Custom House. Frequently the traveller from Canada thinks the infliction at Liverpool is pushed a little further than is requisite. What can we smuggle from Canada? I know quite well that there is generally a very loose conscience as to the contents of a lady’s trunk, considered under the aspect of its fiscal obligations, but surely some form of declaration might be drawn up by means of which honourable men and women would be spared this grievous and irritating delay. Apart from the delay, it is no agreeable matter to open out your carefully packed portmanteau. To ladies it is particularly offensive to have their dresses turned over and the contents of their trunks handled by strangers. Canadians, while crossing their own frontier, find the Custom House officers of the United States, as a rule, particularly courteous, and, on giving a straightforward declaration that they have nothing dutiable, they are generally allowed to pass at once. Liverpool may not be alone in strictly exacting all that the law allows, but is this course at all necessary or wise? It cannot increase the revenue, for the additional expense of collection must more than absorb the trifling receipts. And one is not kindly impressed with this reception, especially when we feel that it is totally unnecessary. We cross the ocean from Canada with peculiar feelings of pride and sentiment to visit our Mother Land, and it is somewhat of a severe wrench to be treated as foreigners by the Customs authorities on our arrival; I will not say uncivilly or wrongfully, but as if we were adventurers going to England on some plundering tour. It is certainly no petty annoyance to Canadians, when they make their entry into a land they are taught to call “home,” to have their sense of common honesty thus challenged at the threshold. Anything which is brought from Canada can only be some trifling present, such as Indian work, to some relative in the Old Country; and if, possibly, a few pounds be lost to the exchequer, it is made up a thousandfold by the good will arising from being courteously treated on the first landing on English soil. Would it not suffice if every ordinary passenger were required to make a declaration in some such form as the following?: “I am a Canadian subject. I declare upon my honour that my baggage contains nothing whatever for sale. I have with me my personal effects for my own use only.” Or it may be added, “I have a few gifts for old friends, of little or no commercial value.”