Collectors of Customs

Working for the Crown

Joseph Harrison had all the right connections.  Through his brother Peter he was related to the Pelhams, who were related to the Duke of Newcastle, who was connected with Jonathan Acklom.  He was a friend of Sir George Savile MP.  In 1755 Joseph went to London with the intention of securing the necessary patronage to get a job working for the Crown in America.  It seems that at this period he frequently crossed the Atlantic; but it was five years before the lobbying paid off.  Joseph Harrison was appointed Collector of Customs at New Haven, Connecticut, in 1760.  He was sworn in on 28 March 1761, and wrote to Sir George Savile on 20 April.  The voyage back to America had been pleasant, but had taken seven weeks and three days from Portsmouth.  

"... we sailed in company with the West India convoy and as ours was one of the best sailing vessels in the Fleet it made keeping company very agreeable. We had a fine moderate northerly wind down the Channel which also continued several days after we left the land; This carried us as farr to the southward as the Canary Islands; and then thinking ourselves quite out of the way of French Privateers we left our convoy in the latitude of 280° which being a fair weather climate we kept nearly in that parallel quite cross the Atlantic Ocean and when we came near the Coast of America happened luckily to fall in with a moderate south west wind which run us quite to New York, so that we had not one gale of wind or a cold day during the whole voyage. I was detained about a fortnight at New York waiting for a passage to this place and during my stay there I had frequent opportunities of observing that this establishment of a Custom house at Newhaven is no small disappointment to many of the Traders there... But the footing upon which the Commissioners of the Customs have put this Office at present will by no means do for any person that intends to act fairly and honestly in it."

For one thing, Joseph's favourite hobby was sailing small boats, and at New Haven the harbour:

"is the most inconvenient for the diversion of Sailing that can possibly be imagined, all round the Shore is a broad Flatt of deep nasty Mudd which at Low water is near half a Mile dry, tho the Tide does not Flow above 7 foot. This, you may conclude is no small mortification, as Sailing is so much my favourite Diversion. However a Boat of some kind or other I must have and shall provide myself with one at Rhode Island."

Just as important was the pay.

"But the footing upon which the Commissioners of the Customs have put this Office at present will by no means do for any person that intends to act fairly and honestly in it. The salary of £50 per annum is fixed on such a precarious foundation that I reckon it as nothing at all... about 45 vessels that enter and clear out here in a year for foreign voyages, which at 15 shillings sterling a piece (the whole Custom house fee for both entering and clearing) is £33.15s., also about 130 coasters at 4/6 each is £29.5s, besides about £7 arising from fees on registers; the whole £70 sterling of which only three fourths is the Collectors property amounting to £52.10s... next year will fall farr short even of that as near half the vessels that went from hence to the West Indies last winter are taken by the French which both discourages and disables people from trading by sea... as the District consists of eight small Trading Towns, all situated on the Sea Coast at the distance of 8 or 10 miles from each other... will require a great deal of riding and the expence of keeping two horses at least which here would amount to £10 sterling per annum each and there must likewise be a Boat kept at Newhaven or many vessels will go cut and come in to this harbour and put goods ashore without making any report at the Custom house...... From this State of the Case you will readily judge that my Situation here is not very easy or Lucrative."

However, the place itself was pleasant enough.

"This Town of Newhaven is very pleasantly situated in a clean dry soil and the streets broad and regularly laid out with a large Square in the middle on which stands the two colleges, the court house and two meeting houses."

He commented on the state of relations between Britain and America:

"This country is now happily relieved from being the theatre of military action... All the northern colonies have raised two thirds the number of men they had in the field last year, which are to be employed in garrisoning the new conquests; that the Regulars may be at liberty for further operations to the southward."

By 1764 Joseph was unhappy enough to sail for England to push for a better deal.  He accompanied Jared Ingersoll on the voyage home, and carried a petition to make Rhode Island a Royal colony.  Reform of the area's government was considered urgent by its inhabitants.  Nothing came of this petition, but Joseph spent his time making contacts and pushing his claim to be a valuable source of information on the American colonies.  He was recommended to Thomas Whately, Secretary of the Treasury, as "a very sensible, ingenious man" and his judgement quickly impressed the officials he met.  The Most valuable of his contacts was the 2nd Marquis of Rockingham, a Whig who had taken his seat in the Lords in 1751 and controlled political life in Yorkshire.  Rockingham had received a report of the death of Peter Randolph, Surveyor of Customs in America, so he offered the post to Harrison.  Joseph was actually sworn in, but on the same night news came in that Randolph was still very much alive.  Disappointed again, Joseph went on a summer sailing trip down the Thames for three weeks, with his friend Savile.

The political situation helped him.  Rockingham had been appointed as First Lord of the Treasury in July 1765.  He inherited the colonial problems in America that had been provoked by Grenville's administration and successfully brought the civil unrest to a halt by repealing the Stamp Act and revising the Sugar Act.  His first ministry lasted only a year because the king negotiated behind Rockingham's back to bring in Pitt the elder; but in 1766 he was able to give Harrison a job as an assistant to his private secretary, Edmund Burke.  It was a post, Harrison wrote, in which his "intimate acquaintance with American affairs has at this time enabled me to be particularly usefull [sic]".  It seemed to Joseph that his future lay in England, and he resigned the New Haven collectorship to his brother Peter.  A few months later Rockingham was out of power; but he had procured for Harrison the Collectorship of Customs at Boston, a post to which Joseph was appointed on 7 July 1766.  On 28 October 1766 "Joseph Harrison Esq Collector & his Family" arrived in Boston on the ship Thames and was sworn into the office on the same day.  His salary was £100 per annum.