REVENUE OFFICERS: ROYAL 99

increasing influence over this patronage. By 1760 customs places
were best obtained by applying directly to Newcastle. ³⁷

However, to avoid the delay of six months or a year, which
would normally follow upon the death of an officer and applica-
tion to London for a new appointee, the Surveyor General of
Customs in the plantations might appoint some new incumbent
at once. ³⁸ To the same end each Governor, after 1727, could
fill a vacancy for the time being should the Surveyor General be
absent or dead. ³⁹ But as any such deputation required later ap-
proval by the Surveyor General, the Customs Commissioners, and
the Treasury, the Governor's appointee was liable to be removed
by one or another of these.

Each officer, unless a royal patentee, held office at pleasure of
the Customs Commissioners, who had wide powers to dismiss, to
discipline, and to promote. ⁴⁰ Once appointed, however, an in-
cumbent usually retained his place until death or resignation, for
promotions and dismissals were alike infrequent. Moreover these
officers often engaged unlawfully in trade and, with or without
special leave, acted by deputy in their home ports, taking a major
share of the profit merely for signing their accounts. The ill paid
deputies acted in a loose, haphazard way, to the loss of His
Majesty's revenue and the general encouragement of smuggling. ⁴¹

³⁷ Ibid., 81. Cf. Horatio Sharpe to William Sharpe, July 8, 1760 (Archives, IX,
436).

³⁸ A list of the Surveyors General may be found in Andrews, op. cit., IV, 198-
202. The first such officer was appointed in 1683. Although the Surveyor
General's authority to appoint customs officers was denied in Maryland by the
President and Council, February, 1693/4 (Archives, XX, 41), he later made
numerous appointments there.

³⁹ Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1726-27, art. 507; L. W. Labaree, Royal
Instructions, to British Colonial Governors, 1670-1776 (2 v., New York, 1935), L
384.

⁴⁰ Hoon, op. cit., 64, 210.

⁴¹ On July 13, 1697, Gov. Francis Nicholson recommended to the Board of
Trade, " That ye Collectors and Naval Officers places be executed by two distinct
persons, so yt they may be a check upon one an other; & yt neither of ym be
publick Traders (for more than is absolute necessity for support of their family s)
ff o r their being great Traders, I think, is one great Reason of illegal Trade; they
having the first Refusal of ye Masters or Merchants Cargos, & of their freight;
first [—?—] of buying the Refuse Cargos, which illegal Traders dare not refuse
ym; and I suppose at low prices; which advantage, I rear, doe too often £—?—}
with these officers" (Public Record Office, Colonial Office, 5/714, part I, LC).
Cf. John Williams to Customs Commissioners at Boston, May 26, 1770 (Maryland
Historical Magazine, XXVII [1932], 234). In 1698 James Reilly, Deputy
Collector of North Potomac, and Richard Savage, Deputy Surveyor and Searcher
of Annapolis, were each getting half the principal's salary (Public Record Office
Audit Office, b. 773, r. 907, LC). In 1770 the Collector of Patuxent, whose