[411] The 19 Geo. II. c. 34, made ‘all forcible acts of smuggling, carried on in defiance of the laws, or even in disguise to evade them, felony without benefit of clergy.’ Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. iv. p. 155. Townsend, who travelled through France in 1786, says, that when any of the numerous smugglers were taken, ‘some of them are hanged, some are broken upon the wheel, and some are burnt alive.’ Townsend's Spain, vol. i. p. 85, edit. 1792. On the general operation of the French laws against smugglers in the eighteenth century, compare Tucker's Life of Jefferson, vol. i. pp. 213, 214, with Parliamentary History, vol. ix. p. 1240.
[412] In a work of considerable ability, the following account is given of the state of things in England and France so late as the year 1824: ‘While this 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.’ Martineau's History of England during Thirty Years' Peace, vol. i. p. 341, 8vo. 1849.
[413] For evidence of the extraordinary extent to which smuggling was formerly carried, and that not secretly, but by powerful bodies of armed men, see Parliamentary History, vol. ix. pp. 243, 247, 1290, 1345, vol. x. pp. 394, 405, 530, 532, vol. xi. p. 935. And on the number of persons engaged in it, compare Tomline's Life of Pitt, vol. i. p. 359: see also Sinclair's History of the Public Revenue, vol. iii. p. 232; Otter's Life of Clarke, vol. i. p. 391. In France, the evil was equally great. M. Lemontey says, that early in the eighteenth century, ‘la contrebande devenait une profession ouverte, et des compagnies de cavalerie désertèrent tout entières leurs étendards pour suivre contre le fisc cette guerre populaire.’ Lemontey, Essai sur l'Etablissement monarchique de Louis XIV, p. 430. According to Townsend, there were, in 1786, ‘more than 1500 smugglers in the Pyrenees.’ Townsend's Journey through Spain, vol. i. p. 84.
[414] Archbishop Whately says, what hardly any thinking man will now deny, ‘If oaths were abolished—leaving the penalties for false witness (no unimportant part of our security) unaltered—I am convinced that, on the whole, testimony would be more trustworthy than it is.’ Whately's Elements of Rhetoric, 8vo. 1850, p. 47. See also on the amount of perjury caused by English legislation, Jeremy Bentham's Works, edit. Bowring, vol. ii. p. 210, vol. v. pp. 191–229, 454–466, vol. vi. pp. 314, 315; Orme's Life of Owen, p. 195; Locke's Works, vol. iv. p. 6; Berkeley's Works, vol. ii. p. 196; Whiston's Memoirs, pp. 33, 411–413; Hamilton's Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, pp. 454, 522, 527, 528. Sir W. Hamilton sums up: ‘But if the perjury of England stands pre-eminent in the world, the perjury of the English Universities, and of Oxford in particular, stands pre-eminent in England,’ p. 528. Compare Priestley's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 374 and Baker's Life of Sir Thomas Bernard, 1819, pp. 188, 189.
[415] ‘L'observation rigoureuse de ces loix seroit destructive de tout commerce; aussi ne sont-elles pas observées rigoureusement.’ Mémoire sur les Prêts d'Argent, sec. xiv., in Œuvres de Turgot, vol. v. pp. 278, 279. Compare Ricardo's Works, pp. 178, 179, with Condorcet, Vie de Turgot, pp. 53, 54, 228.
[416] Aided by the church. Ecclesiastical councils contain numerous regulations against usury; and, in 1179, Pope Alexander ordered that usurers were not to be buried: ‘Quia in omnibus ferè locis crimen usurarum invaluit; ut multi negotiis prætermissis quasi licitè usuras exerceant; et qualiter utriusque testamenti pagina condemnetur, non attendunt: ideò constituimus, ut usurarii manifesti nec ad communionem recipiantur altaris, nec Christianam, si in hoc peccato decesserint, accipiant sepulturam, sed nec oblationem eorum quisquam accipiat.’ Rog. de Hoved. Annal. in Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores post Bedam, p. 335, Lond. 1596, folio. In Spain, the Inquisition took cognizance of usury. See Llorente, Histoire de l'Inquisition, vol. i. p. 339. Compare Ledwich's Antiquities of Ireland, p. 133.
[417] The whole subject of the usury laws has been treated by Bentham in so complete and exhaustive a manner, that I cannot do better than refer the reader to his admirable ‘Letters.’ A part only of the question is discussed, and that very imperfectly, in Rey's Science Sociale, vol. iii. pp. 64, 65. On the necessity of usury to mitigate the effects of a commercial panic, see Mill's Principles of Political Economy, vol. ii. p. 185.
CHAPTER VI.
ORIGIN OF HISTORY, AND STATE OF HISTORICAL LITERATURE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES.