Could it be right, Lord Auckland asked, that there should be no public inquiry, no examination of the whole crew, no statements taken from passengers! The Inspector of Packets was the person to whom it fell to answer this question; and he at once came forward to testify that he thought it the most satisfactory system in the whole world. It was the time-honoured custom at Lloyds, and must therefore be good enough for the General Post-Office. A sworn declaration! Were there no penalties against perjury! The fear of incurring these penalties must be a perfect safeguard, if any be needed among honourable men!
The value of the opinions held by this Inspector of Packets, who must have somewhat resembled Dr. Pangloss (except, as shown by mountainous papers still existing, where his own fees were concerned), was quickly put to a fresh test. But in order to make clear the nature of the very important question which now arose, some amount of explanation and of retrospect is necessary.
Allusions have been made in previous chapters of this work to the fact that all Packets throughout the last century carried goods. Now this practice was expressly forbidden by a statute of Charles II.; but it does not appear that the prohibition had ever been enforced. Mr. Freeling, the Secretary of the Post-Office, stated in a report made about this time that he had been unable to trace the steps by which the trade had developed itself in the teeth of the statute, and that in his opinion the custom “was coeval with the Packet Service itself.” However that may have been, the trade was certainly of antiquity sufficient to have struck deep roots at Falmouth. It was carried on without the slightest concealment; and was indeed expressly sanctioned by the Government, though it remained, as it had always been, illegal. In reports made on the capture of Packets, the presence of goods on board the vessel was set down with no more comment than that of provisions. Indeed, so recently as in 1798, in a code of new regulations applicable to the Packet station at Falmouth, the trade had been explicitly recognized, and the only instruction given to the agent in regard to it was that he must satisfy himself that no Packet carried so large a quantity of goods, or stowed them in such a manner, as to put her out of trim.
The Post-Office always looked unfavourably on this trade; and from time to time sought the assistance of the Treasury in abolishing it, and restricting the Packets to their proper use. But in those days of constant war, when the seas were unsafe for merchant vessels, and the ports now of one nation, now of another, were closed to English ships, the Government held that it would be inopportune to stop a commercial outlet on which many merchants of Bristol and other towns in the west depended for a chief part of their trade; and so the irregular system went on and grew unchecked.
On the Lisbon station the trade seems to have been more important than on the West India boats, though it was very profitable on both. The West India boats carried out cheese, potatoes, boots, and shoes, and, curious addition to the list, fighting cocks, for which there was a brisk demand. The Lisbon Packets exported every kind of manufactured goods, often to the value of £4000 on a single voyage. These were by no means the speculations of the captain or of the officers alone. The seamen traded, each on his own account. Every man had his own stowage space reserved under the ceiling of the forecastle. Here his “ventures” were suspended, and no one claimed to interfere with them.
Sometimes the seaman’s ventures consisted of goods entrusted to him by some merchant, to sell on commission at Lisbon or Barbados; sometimes he had purchased them himself; for not a few of the seamen were capitalists on a small scale, and most of them had formed regular connections with the merchants. The goods once sold in foreign ports, others were of course purchased there. Silks, wines, tobacco, numberless things which by a little ingenuity could be smuggled into Falmouth duty free; and in order to facilitate disposing of these imported bargains, a whole corps of female pedlars was in existence, locally named “troachers,” who trudged the country and hawked about the goods of Jamaica or New York from farm house to country mansion.
There was thus at Falmouth an irregular trade of great value. Every seaman in the employment of the Post-Office was engaged in it. To most it had formed a chief inducement to enter the service; for the wages were very low, and would not of themselves have attracted men away from the Revenue Service or the Royal Navy.
More than once during the last few years of the century suggestions had been made of scandals connected with the Falmouth trade; and hints had been thrown out that a stringent inquiry, conducted on the spot, might bring to light facts which would explain the frequent captures of Packets. The West India merchants, in guarded language, “prayed that ... any abuses in the loading of the Packets ... might be remedied”; but other persons spoke plainly what was here only hinted; and roundly declared that it was sometimes very profitable to be captured, and that the officers who were the most often captured were the most quickly growing rich.
The charge soon took clearer shape. It was said that, in accordance with a common practice, the goods received on board the Packets at Falmouth were insured in England for the double voyage, out and home. If then the goods were sold in the West Indies, it would be a possible thing for the crew to remit the purchase money in bills by some safe channel; and to surrender themselves quietly to the first Privateer they met. They ran the risk of spending some years in a French prison; but one cannot grow rich without some risk, and there was a good chance that the Privateer would put them ashore in their own boat.
When they once reached England, they were secure from detection. They declared before the Insurance Company that the Privateer had taken from them large quantities of goods which they had not succeeded in selling abroad, or which they had purchased there hoping to sell at home. They claimed the value of those goods, and by the next Packet received that value a second time in the bills which they had themselves remitted.