We shall, next year, hear more about the new Coinage, which was being coined at the rate of nearly 300,000 coins per diem.
CHAPTER VI.
Smuggling — "Resurrection Men" — More riots — Orator Hunt — Meetings at Spa Fields — Riots arising therefrom — Execution of one of the rioters — The King's health.
Smuggling, and illicit distilling, were reckoned among venial crimes, but both were practised to an extent unknown at the present time. Let us take a few examples in chronological order.
January 31st. "A band of twenty-eight smugglers were met with lately, loaded with bladders full of smuggled whiskey, supposed to amount to 140 gallons, on their way from the Highlands to Glasgow. The Excise Officers, who met them, being only two in number, dared not attack them, and they all got off."
The next reminds us somewhat forcibly of some late smuggling from one of Her Majesty's yachts: "February 23rd. The following singular occurrence, has, it is reported, taken place, very recently, at Woolwich. A transport, laden with Ordnance Stores unfit for further service, arrived from the French Coasts for the purpose of returning them, and remained some days before the unloading began: it at length took place, when, it is added, some inquisitive officers of the Customs requested to examine the Contents of the articles, and discovered that what was considered, and marked on the packages, as shot, shell, rockets, and other combustibles, consisted of Claret, Champagne, silks, lace, &c. The whole, it is said, were immediately seized, amounting to a considerable sum."
This plan seems to have been tried on again, for in the Annual Register, 30th March, is a similar case, in which it is said that there were goods to the value of £7,000, for one man, packed up as "Return Congreve Rockets."