TESTIMONY TO THE QUALITIES OF THE SEAFARING SMUGGLERS—ADAM SMITH ON SMUGGLING—A CLERICAL COUNTERBLAST—BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF SMUGGLERS—ROBERT JOHNSON, HARRY PAULET—WILLIAM GIBSON, A CONVERTED SMUGGLER
CARE has already been taken to discriminate between the hardy, hearty, and daring fellows who brought their duty-free goods across the sea and those others who, daring also, but often cruel and criminal, handled the goods ashore. We now come to close quarters with the seafaring smugglers, in a few biographical sketches: premising them with some striking testimony to their qualities as seamen.
Captain Brenton, in his “History of the Royal Navy,” pays a very high, but not extravagant, compliment to these daring fellows: “These men,” he says, “are as remarkable for their skill in seamanship as for their audacity in the hour of danger; their local knowledge has been highly advantageous to the Navy, into which, however, they never enter, unless sent on board ships of war as a punishment for some crime committed against the revenue laws. They are hardy, sober, and faithful to each other, beyond the generality of seamen; and, when shipwreck occurs, have been known to perform deeds not exceeded in any country in the world; probably unequalled in the annals of other maritime powers.”
Such men as these, besides being, in the rustic opinion, very much of heroes, engaged in an unequal warfare, against heavy odds, with a hateful, ogreish abstraction called “the Government,” which existed only for the purpose of taxing and suppressing the poor, for the benefit of the rich, were regarded as benefactors; for they supplied the downtrodden, overtaxed people with better articles, at lower prices, than could be obtained in the legitimate way of traders who had paid excise duties.
There was probably a considerable basis of truth to support this view, for there is no doubt that duty-paid goods were largely adulterated. To adulterate his spirits, his tea, and his tobacco was the nearest road to any considerable profit that the tradesman could then make.
Things being of this complexion, it would have been the sheerest pedantry to refuse to purchase the goods the free-traders supplied at such alluringly low prices, and of such indubitably excellent quality; and to give retail publicans and shopkeepers and private consumers their due, as sensible folk, untroubled by supersensitive consciences, they rarely did refuse.