The Smugglers: Picturesque Chapters in the Story of an Ancient Craft

This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler
PICTURESQUE CHAPTERS IN THE STORY OF AN ANCIENT CRAFT
CHARLES G. HARPER
“ Smuggler .— A wretch who , in defiance of the laws , imports or exports goods without payment of the customs .”—Dr. Johnson
ILLUSTRATED BY PAUL HARDY, BY THE AUTHOR AND FROM OLD PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS
London: CHAPMAN & HALL, Ltd.
1909
PRINTED AND BOUND BY HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD., LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
Opinions have ever been divided on the question of the morality , or the immorality , of smuggling . This is not , in itself , remarkable , since that subject on which all men think alike has not yet been discovered ; but whatever the views held upon the question of the rights and wrongs of the “ free-traders ’” craft , they have long since died down into abstract academic discussion . Smuggling is , indeed , not dead , but it is not the potent factor it once was , and to what extent Governments are justified in taxing or restricting in any way the export or the import of goods will not again become a living question in this country until the impending Tariff Reform becomes law . There have been those who , reading the proofs of this book , have variously found in it arguments for , and others arguments against , Protection ; but , as a sheer matter of fact , there are in these pages no studied arguments either way , and facts are here presented just as they are retrieved from half-forgotten records , with no other ulterior object than that of entertainment . But if these pages also serve to show with what little wisdom we are , and generally have been , governed , they may not be without their uses . England , it may surely be gathered , here and elsewhere , is what she is by sheer force of dogged middle-class character , and in spite of her statesmen and lawgivers .
CHARLES G. HARPER
Petersham , Surrey , July 1909.
Customs dues and embargoes on imports and exports are things of immemorial antiquity, the inevitable accompaniments of civilisation and luxury; and the smugglers, who paid no dues and disregarded all prohibitions, are therefore of necessity equally ancient. Carthage, the chief commercial community of the ancient world, was probably as greatly troubled by the questions of customs tariffs and smuggling as was the England of George the Third. Without civilisation, and the consequent demand for the products of other lands, the smuggler’s trade cannot exist. In that highly organised condition of so-styled civilisation which produces wars and race-hatreds and hostile tariffs and swollen taxation, the smuggler becomes an important person, a hateful figure to governments, but not infrequently a beneficent being to the ill-provided—in all nations the most numerous class—to whom he brought, at a reasonable price, and with much daring and personal risk, those comforts which, when they had paid toll to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, were all but unattainable.