6 THE SMUGGLER. 



with- The escapement was anything but fine. Now a days 

 we do things delicately. If we wish to cheat the government, 

 we forge Exchequer bills, or bribe landing- waiters and super- 

 visors, or courteously insinuate to a superior officer that a 

 thousand pounds is not too great a mark of gratitude for 

 enabling us to pocket twenty thousand at the expense of the 

 Customs. If we wish to cheat the public, there is chalk for 

 our milk, grains of paradise for our beer, sago and old rags 

 for our sugar, lime for our linen, and devils' dust to cover our 

 backs. Chemistry and electricity, steam and galvanism, all 

 lend their excellent aid to the cheat, the swindler, and the 

 thief; and if a man is inclined to keep himself within respect- 

 able limits, and deceive himself and others at the same time, 

 with perfect good faith and due decorum, are there not homoeo- 

 pathy, hydropathy, and mesmerism? 



In the days I speak of, it was not so. There was a grander 

 roughness and daringness about both our rogues and our 

 theorists. None but a small villain would consent to be a 

 swindler. We had more robbers than cheats ; and if a man 

 chose to be an impostor, it was with all the dignity and deci- 

 sion of a Psalmanazor, or a bottle conj uror. Gunpowder and 

 lead were the only chemical agents employed ; a bludgeon was 

 the animal magnetism most in vogue, and your senses and 

 your person were attacked and knocked down upon the open 

 road without having the heels of either delicately tripped up 

 by some one you did not see. 



Still this difference was more apparent in the system of 

 smuggling than in anything else, and the whole plan, parti- 

 culars, course of action and results were so completely opposed 

 to anything that is, or can be in the present day; the scenes, 

 the characters, the very localities have so totally changed, that 

 it may be necessary to pause a moment before we go on to 

 tell our tale, in order to give some sort of description of the 

 state of the country bordering on the sea-coast, at the period 

 to which I allude. 



Scarcely any one of the maritime counties was, in those 

 days, without its gang of smugglers; for if France was not 

 opposite, Holland was not far off; and if brandy was not the 

 object, nor silk, nor wine, yet tea and cinnamon, and hollands, 

 and various East India goods, were things duly estimated by 

 the British public, especially when they could be obtained 



