184 Notes and Sketches, 



especially "by the landed proprietors even those not 

 disinclined quietly to enjoy a drop of Hollands, duty- 

 free that the questionable gain effected was pur- 

 chased at an enormous loss, in diverting the attention 

 of the people from the cultivation of the land and Other 

 honest industrial pursuits, and teaching the male part 

 of them at least dissipated and reckless habits. And, 

 though during the last ten or fifteen years of the 

 century coast smuggling still continued, it had 

 got considerably discredited amongst all the more 

 respectable classes of the community ; and, under that 

 feeling, and the increased efforts of the excise, was 

 getting more limited in extent. With inland smuggling 

 the case was entirely different. It was only through 

 the increase in the duties on malt liquors, made not 

 many years before the close of the century, that 

 the temptation to the private manufacture of malt 

 and distillation of whisky first occurred ; and the 

 practice, by and by, became very general, alike in 

 the Lowlands and Highlands. Among the Lowland 

 peasantry, male and female alike engaged in it, there 

 being no more persistent devotees of "the worm" than 

 some of the " sma' goodwives" who had got into the 

 habit of " rinnin' a drap," and getting it quietly 

 marketed as they best could. There was nothing dis- 

 reputable in the practice in the public opinion of 

 their neighbourhoods ; and nothing disgraceful in 

 being caught by the gangers. Such a mishap might, 

 indeed, be inconvenient ; but then the awards of their 

 honours, the Justices, were not of formidable severity. 

 They would at times sit a whole day adjudicating 

 cases of private malting or distillation, and, in the 

 course of the entire sitting, impose no higher penalty 

 than half-a-crown or so upon any one of the dozen 

 or score of delinquents arraigned before them. It 

 would be quite the exception where a culprit of a 

 superior class came up, as happened at a certain 

 Court of Justices, at which my Lord Kintore pre- 





