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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
In 'The Smugglers,' Charles G. Harper crafts a vivid narrative set against the backdrop of 19th-century England, exploring the intricate web of illicit trade along the rugged coastline. Harper's literary style intertwines rich, descriptive prose with sharp dialogue, effectively immersing the reader in a world where law and morality often collide. The book not only delves into the lives of its characters but also reflects the socio-economic factors driving smuggling, offering an evocative portrayal of a time when desperation can push individuals into a life of crime. Harper'Äôs keen observations reveal the tensions between legality and survival, revealing the darker undercurrents of human nature in a rapidly changing landscape. Charles G. Harper, a notable British author and illustrator, was deeply influenced by his childhood experiences in coastal towns where smuggling was prevalent. His extensive travels and interests in maritime history informed his understanding of the complexities surrounding illegal trade, lending authenticity to the narrative. As a passionate advocate of the arts and culture, Harper sought to capture the essence of an era marked by both adventure and moral ambiguity. Readers seeking a combination of historical depth and thrilling escapades will find 'The Smugglers' a captivating exploration of the human spirit's resilience amidst ethical dilemmas. Harper's engaging storytelling, combined with his meticulous attention to historical detail, renders this work an essential addition to the canon of 19th-century literature. Dive into this gripping tale that highlights the blurred lines between right and wrong and offers insights into a unique aspect of cultural history.
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The Smugglers
Table of Contents
PREFACE
Opinionshave 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 wisdomwe 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.
INTRODUCTORY
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.
The chief defence, on the score of morals, set up by those few smugglers who ever were at pains to prove that smuggling could be no crime, was that customs duties were originally imposed in the time of Charles the Second to provide funds for the protection of our coasts from the Algerine and Barbary pirates who then occasionally adventured thus far from their piratical lurks in the Mediterranean and ravaged the more remote villages of our seaboard. When these dangers ceased, contended these smugglers on their defence, the customs dues should automatically have been taken off; but they were, on the contrary, greatly increased.
This view, or excuse, or defence—call it how we will—was, however, entirely without historical foundation. It is true, indeed, that some ports had been taxed, and that customs dues had been imposed for this purpose, but customs charges were immemorially older than the seventeenth century. There were probably such imposts in that lengthy era when Britain was a Roman colony, and we certainly hear of customs charges being levied in the reign of Ethelred, when a toll of one halfpenny was charged upon every small boat arriving at Billingsgate, and one penny upon larger boats, with sails.
These pages will show that not only import, but also export smuggling was long continued in England, and not only so, but that the export smuggling, notably that of wool, was for centuries the most important, if not the only, kind. The prohibition of sending wool out of the kingdom was, of course, introduced with the object of fostering the cloth manufacture; but there are always two sides to any question, and in this case the embargo upon wool soon taught the cloth-workers that, in the matter of prices, they had the wool-growers at their mercy. By law they could not sell to foreign customers, or (later) only upon paying heavy dues; and the cloth-workers could therefore practically dictate their own terms. In this pitiful resort—an example of the disastrous effect of government interference with trade—there was nothing left but to set the law at defiance, which the wool-growers and their allies, the “owlers,” accordingly did, risking life and limb in the wholesale exportation of wool. It is the duty of every citizen to oppose bad laws, but this opposition to ill-conceived enactments creates a furtive class of men, very Ishmaelites, who, with their liberty, and even their lives, forfeit, are rendered capable, in extremity, of any and every enormity. Hence arose those reckless bands of smugglers who in the middle of the eighteenth century became highly organised and all-powerful in Kent, Sussex, and Hampshire, and, realising their power, developed into criminals of the most ferocious type. They were, properly regarded, the products of bad government, the creatures brought into existence by a vicious system that took its origin in the coming of William the Third, the “Deliverer,” as history, tongue in cheek, styles him.
The growth of customs dues in the last years of the seventeenth century, and so onward, in a vicious progression until the opening years of the nineteenth, was not in any way owing to consideration for home traders, or to a desire for the protection of British industries. They grew exactly in proportion as the needs of the Government for revenue increased; and were the direct results of that long-continued policy of foreign alliances and aggressive interference in continental politics—that “spirited foreign policy” advocated even in our own times—which was introduced with the coming of William the Third. We did well to depose James the Second, but we might have done better than bring over his son-in-law and make him king; and we might, still more, have done better than raise the Elector of Hanover to the status of British sovereign, as George the First. Then we should probably have avoided foreign entanglements, at any rate, until that later era when increased intercourse between the nations rendered international politics inevitable.
Foreign wars, and the heavy duties levied to pay for them, brought about the enormous growth of smuggling, and directly caused all the miseries and the blood-stained incidents that make the story of the smugglers so “romantic.” Glory is very fine, and stirs the pulses in reading the pages of history, but it is a commodity for which victorious nations, no less than the defeated, are called upon to pay in blood, tears, and privation.
With the great peace that, in 1815, succeeded the long and harassing period of continual war, the people naturally looked forward towards a time when the excessively heavy duties would be reduced, and many articles altogether relieved from taxation. As a matter of fact, some of these duties scarce paid the cost of their collection, and simply helped to keep in office a large and increasing horde of officials. But the price of glory continues to be paid, long after the laurels have faded; and not for many years to come were those imposts reduced.
Sydney Smith, writing in 1820 on the subject of American desire for a large navy, even then very manifest, warned the people of the United States of the nemesis awaiting such indulgence. “We can inform Jonathan,” he said, “what are the inevitable consequences of being too fond of glory: Taxes upon every article which enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under the foot; taxes upon everything which it is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell, or taste; taxes upon warmth, light, and locomotion; taxes on everything on earth, and the waters under the earth; on everything that comes from abroad, or is grown at home; taxes on the raw material, taxes on every fresh value that is added to it by the industry of man; taxes on the sauce which pampers man’s appetite and the drug that restores him to health; on the ermine which decorates the judge and the rope which hangs the criminal; on the poor man’s salt and the rich man’s spice; on the brass nails of the coffin and the ribands of the bride; at bed or board, couchant or levant, we must pay. The schoolboy whips his taxed top; the beardless youth manages his taxed horse with a taxed bridle on a taxed road; and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has paid seven per cent., into a spoon that has paid fifteen per cent., flings himself back upon his chintz bed which has paid twenty-two per cent., makes his will on an eight-pound stamp, and expires in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a licence of a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death. His whole property is then immediately taxed from two to ten per cent. Besides the probate, large fees are demanded for burying him in the chancel; his virtues are handed down to posterity on taxed marble; and he is then gathered to his fathers—to be taxed no more.”
The real cost of military glory was aptly shown by a caricaturist of this period, who illustrated the general rise of prices consequent upon war in the following incident of an old country-woman buying a halfpenny candle at a chandler’s shop:
“Price has gone up,” said the shopkeeper curtly, when she tendered the money.
“What’s that for, then?” asked the old woman.
“On account of the war, ma’am.”
“Od rot ’em! do they fight by candlelight?” she not unnaturally asked.
Housekeepers of the present day may well enter—although somewhat ruefully—into the humour of this simple story, for in the great and continued rise of every commodity since the great Boer War, it is most poignantly illustrated for us. In short, the people who pay for the glory see nothing of it, and derive nothing from it.
How entirely true were those witty phrases of Sydney Smith we may easily guess from the mere rough statement that there were, in 1787, no fewer than 1,425 articles liable to duty (very many of them taxed at several times their market value), bringing in £6,000,000 a year.
In 1797 the customs laws filled six large folio volumes. The total number of Customs Acts prior to the accession of George the Third was 800, but no fewer than 1,300 were added between the years 1760 and 1813, and newer Acts, partly repealing and partly adding to older enactments, were continually being added to this vast mass of chaotic legislation down to the middle of the Victorian era, until even experts were frequently baffled as to the definite legal position of many given articles. Finally—it is typical of our English amateur way of doing things—in 1876, when so-called “Free Trade” had come in, and few articles remained customable, the customs laws were consolidated.
Many years before, at one swoop, Sir Robert Peel had removed the duties from four hundred different dutiable articles, leaving, however, many hundreds of others more or less heavily assessed.
In consequence of this relief from taxation, smuggling rapidly decreased, and the Commissioners of Customs were enabled to report: “With the reduction of duties, and the removal of all needless and vexatious restrictions, smuggling has greatly diminished, and the public sentiment with regard to it has undergone a very considerable change. The smuggler is no longer an object of general sympathy, as a hero of romance; and people are beginning to awaken to a perception of the fact that his offence is not only a fraud on the revenue, but a robbery of the fair trader. Smuggling is now almost entirely confined to tobacco, spirits, and watches.”
No fewer than four hundred and fifty other dutiable articles were struck off the list in 1845, and the Cobdenite era of Free Trade, to which, it was expected, all other nations would speedily be converted, had opened.
“Free Trade,” we are told, “killed smuggling.” It naturally killed smuggling so far as duty-free articles were concerned; but this all-embracing term of “Free Trade” is altogether a mockery and a delusion. There has never been—there is not now—complete Free Trade in this so-called free-trade country. Wines and spirits, tobacco, tea and coffee, cocoa and sugar, are not they in the forefront of the articles that render regularly to the Chancellor of the Exchequer? There have been, indeed, throughout all the years of the Free Trade era, some forty articles scheduled for paying customs duty on import into the United Kingdom. They help the revenue to the extent of about £27,000,000 per annum.
The romance of smuggling has very largely engaged the attention of every description of writers, but we do not hear so much of its commercial aspects, although it must be evident that for men to dare so greatly as the smugglers did with winds and waves and with the customs’ forces, the possible gains must have been great. Time and again a cargo of tea or of spirits would be seized, and yet the smugglers be prepared with other ventures, knowing, as they did, that one entirely successful run would pay for perhaps two failures. When tea could be purchased in Holland at sevenpence a pound, and sold in England at prices ranging from 3s. 6d. to 5s., and when tobacco, purchased at the same price, sold at 2s. 6d., it is evident that great possibilities existed for the enterprising free-trader.
As regards spirits, if we take brandy as an example, we find almost equal profits; for excellent cognac was shipped from Roscoff, in Brittany, from Cherbourg, Dieppe, and other French ports in tubs of four gallons each, which cost in France £1 a tub, and sold in England at £4. One of the ordinary smuggling luggers, generally built especially for this traffic, on racing lines, would hold eighty tubs.
On such a cargo being brought, according to preconcerted plan, within easy distance off-shore, generally at night, a lantern or other signal shown from cliff or beach by confederates on land would indicate the precise spot where the goods were most safely to be beached; and there would be assembled a sufficient company of labourers engaged for the job. A cargo of eighty tubs required forty men, who carried two each, slung by ropes over chest and back. According to circumstances, they marched in company on foot, inland; or, if the distance were great, they went on horseback, each man with a led horse, carrying three or four tubs in addition. These labourers, although not finally interested in the safe running of the goods, and not paid on any other basis than being hired for the heavy job of carrying considerable weights throughout the night, were quite ready and willing to fight any opponents that might be met, as innumerable accounts of savage encounters tell us. Besides these carriers, there were often, in case of opposition to the landing being anticipated, numerous “batsmen,” armed with heavy clubs, to protect the goods.
The pay of a labourer or carrier varied widely, of course, in different places, at different times, and according to circumstances. It ranged from five shillings to half a sovereign a night, and generally included also a present of a package of tea or a tub of brandy for so many successful runs. It is recorded that the labourers engaged for riding horseback, each with a led horse, from Sandwich, Deal, Dover, Folkestone, or Romney, to Canterbury, a distance of some fifteen miles, were paid seven shillings a night. The horses cost the smugglers nothing, for they were commandeered, as a general rule, from the neighbouring farmers, who did not usually offer any objection, for it was not often that the gangs forgot to leave a tub in payment. The method employed in thus requisitioning horses was quite simple. An unsigned note would be handed to a farmer stating that his horses were wanted, for some purpose unnamed, on a certain night; and that he was desired to leave his stables unlocked for those who would come and fetch them. If he did not comply with this demand he very soon had cause to regret it in the mysterious disasters that would shortly afterwards overtake him: his outbuildings being destroyed by fire, his farming implements smashed, or his cattle mutilated.
The farmers, indeed, were somewhat seriously embarrassed by the prevalence of smuggling. On the one hand, they had to lend their horses for the smugglers’ purposes, and on the other they discovered that the demand for carriers of tubs and other goods shortened the supply of labour available for agricultural purposes, and sent up the rate of wages. A labourer in the pay of smugglers would often be out three nights in the week, and, with the money he received and with additional payment in kind, was in a very comfortable position.
CHAPTER I
The “Owlers” of Romney Marsh, and the Ancient Export Smuggling of Wool
The earliest conflicts of interests between smugglers and the Government were concerned with the export of goods, and not with imports. We are accustomed to think only of the import smuggler, who brought from across Channel, or from more distant shores, the spirits, wines, tea, coffee, silks, laces, and tobacco that had never yielded to the revenue of the country; but before him in point of time, if not also in importance, was the “owler” who, defying all prohibitions and penalties, even to those of bodily mutilation and death, sold wool out of England and secretly shipped it at night from the shores of Kent and Sussex.
English wool had from a very early date been greatly in demand on the Continent. The England of those distant times was a purely agricultural country, innocent of arts, industries, and manufactures, except of the most primitive description. The manufacturers then exercised their skilled trades largely in France and the Low Countries; and, in especial, the cloth-weaving industries were practised in Flanders.
So early as the reign of Edward the First the illegal exportation of wool engaged the attention of the authorities, and an export duty of £3 a bag (in modern money) was imposed, soon after 1276. This was in 1298 increased to £6 a bag, then lowered, and then again raised. English wool was then worth 1s. 6d. a pound.
In the reign of Edward the Third a strenuous attempt was made to introduce the weaving industries into England, and every inducement was offered the Flemish weavers to settle here and to bring their art with them. In support of this policy, the export of wool was, in various years, subjected to further restrictions, and at one time entirely forbidden. The royal solicitude for the newly cradled English weaving industries also in 1337 forbade the wearing of clothing made with cloth woven out of the country; but it is hardly necessary to add that edicts of this stringency were constantly broken; and in 1341 Winchelsea, Chichester, and thirteen other ports were named, whence wool might be exported, on payment of a duty of 50s. a sack of twenty-six stone—i.e. 364 lb.
The interferences with the sale and export of wool continued, and the duty was constantly being raised or lowered, according to the supposed needs of the time; but nearly always with unforeseen and disastrous effects. The wool staple was removed to the then English possession of Calais in 1363, and the export of it absolutely forbidden elsewhere. The natural result, in spite of the great amount of smuggling carried on, was that in a long series of years the value of wool steadily fell; the cloth-makers taking advantage of the accumulation of stocks on the growers’ hands to depress the price. In 1390 the growers had from three to five seasons’ crops on hand, and the state of the industry had become such that in the following year permission to export generally, on payment of duty, was conceded. This duty tended to become gradually heavier, and, as it increased, so proportionably did the “owling” trade.
The price of wool therefore declined again, and in 1454 it was recorded as being not more than two-thirds of what it had been a hundred and ten years earlier. The wool-growers, on the brink of ruin, petitioned that wool, according to its various grades, might not be sold under certain fixed prices; which were accordingly fixed.
But to follow, seriatim, the movements in prices and the complete reversals of Government policy regarding the export, would be wearisome. We will, therefore, pass on to the Restoration of the monarchy, in 1660, when the export of wool was again entirely forbidden. Smuggling of it was in 1662 again, by the reactionary laws of the period, made a felony, punishable with death; yet the active smugglers, the rank and file of the owling trade, who performed the hard manual labour for wages, at the instigation of those financially interested, continued to risk their necks for twelvepence a day. The low price their services commanded is alone sufficient to show us that labour, in spite of the risks, was plentiful. Not only Kent and Sussex, but Essex, and Ireland as well, largely entered into this secret “stealing of wool out of the country,” as the phrase ran; and “these caterpillars” had so many evasions, and commanded so many combinations and interests among those officials whose business it was to detect and punish, that few dared interfere: hence the readiness of the labourers to “risk their necks,” the risk being, under the circumstances, small.
Indeed, readers of the adventures of these owling desperadoes and of the customs officers who hunted them will, perhaps, come to the conclusion that the risks on either side were pretty evenly apportioned, and they will see that the hunters not seldom became the hunted.
The experiences of one W. Carter, who appears to have been in authority over the customs staff in the Romney Marsh district, towards the close of the seventeenth century, were at times singularly vivid. His particular “hour of crowded life” came in 1688, while he was engaged in an attempt to arrest a body of owlers who were shipping wool into some French shallops between Folkestone and New Romney.
Having procured the necessary warrants, he repaired to Romney, where he seized eight or ten men who were carrying the wool on their horses’ backs to be shipped, and desired the Mayor of Romney to commit them, but, greatly to the surprise of this zealous officer, who doubtless imagined he had at last laid some of these desperate fellows securely by the heels, the Mayor of Romney consented to the prisoners being admitted to bail. Mr. Carter, to have been so ingenuously surprised, must have been a singularly simple official, or quite new to the business; for what Mayor of Romney in those days, when every one on the Marsh smuggled, or was interested financially in the success of smuggling, would dare not deal leniently with these fellows! Nay, it was even abundantly probable that the Mayor himself was financially committed in these ventures, and perhaps even among the employers of Mr. Carter’s captives.
Romney was no safe abiding-place for Carter and his underlings when these men were enlarged; and they accordingly retired upon Lydd. But if they had fondly expected peace and shelter there they were woefully mistaken, for a Marshland cry of vengeance was raised, and a howling mob of owlers, ululating more savagely than those melancholy birds from whom they took their name, violently attacked them in that little town, under cover of night. The son of the Mayor of Lydd, well disposed to these sadly persecuted revenue men, advised them to further retire upon Rye, which they did the next morning, December 13th, pursued hotly across the dyke-intersected marshes, as far as Camber Point, by fifty furious men.
At Guilford Ferry the pursuers were so close upon their heels that they had to hurriedly dismount and tumble into some boats belonging to ships lying near, leaving their horses behind; and so they came safe, but breathless, into Rye town.
At this period Calais—then lost to England—alone imported within two years 40,000 packs of wool from Kent and Sussex; and the Romney Marsh men not only sold their own wool in their illicit manner, but bought other from up-country, ten or twenty miles inland, and impudently shipped it off.
In 1698, the severe laws of some thirty years earlier having been thus brought into contempt, milder penal enactments were introduced, but more stringent conditions than ever were imposed upon the collection and export of this greatly vexed commodity, and the civil deterrents of process and fine, aimed at the big men in the trade, were strengthened. A law was enacted (9 & 10 William the Third, c. 40, ss. 2 and 3) by which no person living within fifteen miles of the sea in the counties of Kent and Sussex should buy any wool before he became responsible in a legal bond, with sureties, that none of the wool he should buy should be sold by him to any persons within fifteen miles of the sea; and growers of wool in those counties, within ten miles of the coast, were obliged, within three days of shearing, to account for the number of fleeces shorn, and to state where they were stored.
The success of this new law was not at first very marked, for the means of enforcing it had not been provided. To enact repressive edicts, and not to provide the means of their being respected, was as unsatisfactory as fighting the wind. The Government, viewing England as a whole, appointed under the new Act seventeen surveyors for nineteen counties, with 299 riding-officers: a force barely sufficient for Kent and Sussex alone. It cost £20,000 a year, and never earned its keep.
Henry Baker, supervisor for Kent and Sussex, writing on April 25th, 1699, to his official chiefs, stated that there would be shorn in Romney Marsh, quite apart from the adjacent levels of Pett, Camber, Guilford, and Dunge Marsh, about 160,000 sheep, whose fleeces would amount to some three thousand packs of wool, “the greatest part whereof will immediately be sent off hot into France—it being so designed, preparations in great measure being already made for that purpose.”
In fact, the new law at first did nothing more than to give the owlers some extra trouble and expense in cartage of their packs; for, in order to legally evade the extra disabilities it imposed, it was only necessary to cart them fifteen miles inland and make fictitious sale and re-sale of them there; thence shipping them as they pleased.
By this time the exportation of wool had become not only a kingly concern—it had aroused the keen interest of the nation at large, fast becoming an industrial and cloth-weaving nation. For two centuries and more past the cloth-workers had been growing numerous, wealthy, and powerful, and they meant, as far as it was possible for them to do, to starve the continental looms out of the trade, for sheer lack of material. No one cared in the least about the actual grower of the wool, whether he made a loss or a profit on his business. It is obvious that if export of it could have been wholly stopped, the cloth-workers, in the forced absence of foreign buyers, would have held the unfortunate growers in the hollow of their hands, and would have been able to dictate the price of wool.
It is the inalienable right of every human being to fight against unjust laws; only we must be sure they are unjust. Perhaps the dividing-line, when self-interest is involved, is not easily to be fixed. But there can be no doubt that the wool-growers were labouring under injustice, and that they were entirely justified in setting those laws at naught which menaced their existence.
However, by December 1703, Mr. Baker was able to give his superiors a more favourable report. He believed the neck of the owling trade to have been broken and the spirit of the owlers themselves to have been crushed, particularly in Romney Marsh. There were not, at that time, he observed, “many visible signs” of any quantities of wool being exported: which seems to us rather to point to the perfected organisation of the owling trade than to its being crushed out of existence.
“But for fine goods,” continued the supervisor, “as they call them (viz. silks, lace, etc.), I am well assured that the trade goes on through both counties, though not in such vast quantities as have been formerly brought in—I mean in those days when (as a gentleman of estate in one of the counties has within this twelve months told me) he has been att once, besides at other times, at the loading of a wagon with silks, laces, etc., till six oxen could hardly move it out of the place. I doe not think that the trade is now so carried on as ’twas then.”
Things being so promising in the purview of this simple person, it seemed well to him to suggest to the Commissioners of the Board of Customs that a reduction of the annual charge of £4,500 for the preventive service along the coasts of Kent and Sussex might be effected. At that time there were fifty preventive officers patrolling over two hundred miles of seaboard, each in receipt of £60 per annum, and each provided with a servant and a horse, to help in night duty, at an estimated annual cost of £30 for each officer.
We may here legitimately pause in surprise at the small pay for which these men were ready to endure the dangers and discomforts of such a service; very real perils and most unmistakable disagreeables, in midst of an almost openly hostile country-side.
Mr. Baker, sanguine man that he was, proposed to abolish the annual allowance to each of these hard-worked men for servant and horse, thus saving £1,500 a year, and to substitute for them patrols of the Dragoon regiments at that time stationed in Kent. These regiments had been originally placed there in 1698 to overawe the owlers and other smugglers, the soldiers being paid twopence extra a day (which certainly did not err upon the side of extravagance) and the officers in proportion: the annual cost on that head amounting to £200 per annum. This military stiffening of the civil force employed to prevent clandestine export and import appears to have been discontinued in 1701, after about two years’ experiment.
These revived patrols, at a cost of £200, the supervisor calculated, would more efficiently and economically undertake the work hitherto performed by the preventive officers’ horses and men, still leaving a saving of £1,300 a year. With this force, and a guard of cruisers offshore, he was quite convinced that the smuggling of these parts would still be kept under.
But alas for these calculations! The economy thus effected on this scheme, approved of and put into being, was altogether illusory. The owling trade, of which the supervisor had supposed the neck to be broken, flourished more impudently than before. The Dragoons formed a most inefficient patrol, and worked ill with the revenue officers, and, in short, the Revenue lost annually many more thousands of pounds sterling than it saved hundreds. When sheriffs and under-sheriffs could be, and were, continually bribed, it is not to be supposed that Dragoons, thoroughly disliking such an inglorious service as that of chasing smugglers along muddy lanes and across country intricately criss-crossed with broad dykes rarely to be jumped, would be superior to secret advances that gave them much more than their miserable twopence a day.
Transportation for wool-smugglers who did not pay the fines awarded against them was enacted in 1717; ineffectually, for in 1720 it was found necessary to issue a proclamation, enforcing the law; and in five successive years from 1731 the cloth-workers are found petitioning for greater vigilance against the continued clandestine exportation, alleging a great decay in the woollen manufactures owing to this illegal export; 150,000 packs being shipped yearly. “It is feared,” said these petitioners, fighting for their own hand, regardless, of course, of other interests, “that some gentlemen of no mean rank, whose estates border on the sea-coast, are too much influenced by a near, but false, prospect of gain”: to which the gentlemen in question, being generally brought up on the dead classic languages, might most fairly have replied, had they cared to do so, with the easy Latinity of Tu quoque!
This renewed daring and enterprise of the Sussex smugglers led to many encounters with the customs officers. Among these was the desperate engagement between sixty armed smugglers and customs men at Ferring, on June 21st, 1720, when William Goldsmith, of the Customs, had his horse shot under him.
A humorous touch, so far at least as the modern reader of these things is concerned, is found in the Treasury warrant issued about this time, for the sum of £200, for supplying a regiment with new boots and stockings; their usual allowance of these indispensable articles having been “worn out in the pursuit of smugglers.”
In spite of all attempts to suppress these illegal activities, it had to be acknowledged, in the preamble of an Act passed in 1739, that the export of wool was “notoriously continued.”
The old-established owling trade of Romney Marsh at length, after many centuries, gave place to the clandestine import of silks, tea, spirits, and tobacco; but it was only by slow and insensible degrees that the owlers’ occupation dwindled away, in the lessening foreign demand for English wool. The last was not heard of this more than five-centuries-old question of the export of wool, that had so severely exercised the minds of some twenty generations, and had baffled the lawgivers in all that space of time, until the concluding year of the final wars with France at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Many other articles were at the same time forbidden to be exported; among them Fuller’s-earth, used in the manufacture of cloth, and so, of course, subject to the same interdict as wool. A comparatively late Exchequer trial for the offence of exporting Fuller’s-earth was that of one Edmund Warren, in 1693. Fortunately for the defendant, he was able to show that what he had exported was not Fuller’s-earth at all, but potter’s clay.
CHAPTER II
Growth of Tea and Tobacco Smuggling in the Eighteenth Century—Repressive Laws a Failure
Side by side with the export smuggling of wool, the import smuggling of tobacco and tea grew and throve amazingly in later ages. Every one, knowingly or unsuspectingly, smoked tobacco and drank tea that had paid no duty.
“Great Anna” herself, who was among the earliest to yield to the refining influence of tea—
Great Anna, whom three realms obey, Doth sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tay—
in all probability often drank tea which had contributed nothing to the revenue. Between them tea and tobacco, in the illegal landing of the goods, found employment for hundreds of hardy seafaring men and stalwart landsmen, and led to much violence and bloodshed, beside which the long-drawn annals of the owlers seem almost barren of incident.
