the wharf, these craft unprotected had to lie up, sometimes as long as six or eight weeks, before they could be unloaded, not a night passing without sustaining loss of some kind. Lightermen, labourers, watermen, the crews of ships—in some instances recorded, the officers included, and even the Revenue officers—combined in this nefarious system. The sides of the river swarmed with receiving-houses, many of them kept by persons of considerable opulence; and when it is borne in mind that the value of property floating on the river was estimated at £70,000,000 per annum, it will be seen what a rich harvest these rascals had to reap. The men engaged in the discharge of ships were under little or no control, and their depredations had come to be of so systematic a character that they were regarded as one of the taxes of the port. The several classes of thieves were even known by special designations to indicate the field of their operations. The body known as the ‘River Pirates’ were the most formidable of these marauders. Most of them were in open league with the marine store dealers. Reconnoitring by day, they made their attacks upon ships by night in armed boats, cutting adrift lighters and taking out their contents. The ‘Night Plunderers’—watermen of the lowest class—attacked unprotected lighters and made over the booty to the receivers. The ‘Light Horsemen’ comprised the mates of ships and Revenue officers. Then there were the ‘Heavy Horsemen,’ consisting of the porters and labourers employed on board ships, who wore dresses specially made with big inside pockets to secrete anything of value that was not too heavy to carry off; to say nothing of the ‘Mud Larks’, who picked out of the mud on the shore property thrown overboard by persons in concert with them at work in the ship. Some of these young thieves are said to have received as much as £5 a night for their booty. The losses sustained in wines and spirits were something enormous. Instances are recorded of lighters with double bottoms being employed; and by dexterously loosening two or three hoops of casks and turning them bung downward, hundreds of gallons of rum, wine, or oil—as the case might be—were deposited in the false bottom during transit from the ship to the wharf. The greatest sufferers were the West India merchants. Mr. Hibbert, one of the most eminent of our West India merchants, speaking in 1822 of this condition of things, gives a graphic description of the grievances of the trade. Both rum and sugar samples were drawn on board ship. The aggregate weight of the sugar samples drawn from each cask averaged 12 lbs. In breaking out hogsheads of sugar the casks were often knocked to pieces, in order that their contents might be picked up as scrapings, and claimed as perquisites. Sometimes whole packages were appropriated. Of a cargo of 120 puncheons of rum brought by one vessel 7 puncheons were thus _missing_. Mr. Lindsay, in his admirable work, ‘A History of