M. Merivale
Ed Aug 2
Hm /429
der Intercare
We shall probably receive some injury from the severe consequence
A
BRIEF STATEMENT
OF THE
PUBLIC SERVICES OF SIR JOHN BOWRING.
127471/19
144
D
On the recommendation of Mr. Alexander Baring (Lord Ashburton), and the Parliamentary Finance Committee, I was in 1828 sent by Mr. Herries, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, to report on the public accounts of Holland. I received nothing but my expenses for this mission. My report was laid before Parliament.
On Lord John Russell's appointment, I discharged the duties of an unpaid Commissioner to inquire into the state of extra-parochial records of births and deaths, and I examined and reported on more than seven thousand volumes, which occupied me for many months.
I was nominated in 1832 Secretary to the Commission for the Reform of the Public Accounts, of which Sir Henry Parnell was chairman. I visited and examined in the greatest detail the Comptabilité of the French Government, and presented two reports, which were published for Parliament. They form the ground-work of our present improved system. Sir Henry Parnell and I wrote the Reports on the Exchequer, and prepared those resolutions which, after long delays, have become the law of public accountancy in Great Britain and the Colonies.
In 1831 I was appointed, with the present Earl of Clarendon, Commercial Commissioner to France. Though not successful to the extent of our hopes and wishes, we obtained some liberal modifications of the tariff—the first concessions made. The Export trade of Great Britain to France was, in 1831, £602,688; in 1858, £4,861,558. The Import trade of French produce from France to Great Britain and British colonies in 1831 was, according to the French official returns, £3,192,300; in 1857, being the last statement received, it was £15,467,055.
On our commercial relations with France, two elaborate reports were presented by Lord Clarendon and myself. They are parliamentary documents.
The reports of my commercial missions undertaken at various times, and which have been published for the information of Parliament, are—that to Egypt and Syria—to Lombardy, Tuscany, and Rome—and to Switzerland.
On two occasions I visited Belgium with a view to modification of their commercial system; and I represented Great Britain at the meeting of the Zollverein in Berlin in 1838.
I have reason to know that my communications with Sir Robert Peel were not without their influence in bringing about that change in our commercial system which has in its results proved so beneficial.
I may mention here, that I wrote the greater part of the report of Mr. Hume's Committee on the Import Duties—a report which has been translated into all the commercial languages of Europe, and circulated to the extent of hundreds of thousands of copies. Many of its recommendations were adopted by Sir Robert Peel.
The Treaty with Siam—peaceably negotiated by me in 1855, after repeated failures of former plenipotentiaries—will, I believe, in its realised results, be found one of the most satisfactory that