was going forward on the English coast, the smugglers on the opposite shore were engaged with much more labour, risk, and expense, in introducing English woollens, by a vast system of fraud and lying into the towns, past a series of custom-houses. In both countries there was an utter dissoluteness of morals connected with these transactions. Cheating and lying were essential to the whole system : drunkenness accompanied it : contempt for all law grew up under it : honest industry perished beneath it ; and it was crowned with murder."
" The loss to the revenue was immense. It has been calculated that the loss of duties consequent on smuggling, added to the cost of the Preventive Service and Coast Blockade, was not less in 1822 and 1823 than a million a-year. Amid the general prosperity there was something wrong here."
It must not be supposed that the circumstances which I shall relate are mere romance . The facts have been gathered by myself from eye-witnesses, in some cases from actual participators, still living : so that, though I may dress up the characters somewhat, and, in order not to give pain to any person or persons still living, give the actors fictitious names, my readers may rely upon it, that what I relate will be a faithful picture of smuggling as it existed from fifty to one hundred years ago.
What is Smuggling ? and-what is a smuggler ?
