THE SMUGGLER. 37 



if, as you say, you have not come down hither for old asso- 

 ciations, you must be sent to hunt down honester men than 

 those who sent you ; men who break boldly through an unjust 

 and barbarous system, which denies to our land the goods of 

 another, and who, knowing that the very knaves who devised 

 that system, did it but to enrich themselves, stop with a 

 strong hand a part of the plunder on the way; or, rather, 

 insist at the peril of their lives, on man's inherent right to 

 trade with his neighbours, and frustrate the roguish devices of 

 those who would forbid to our land the use of that produced 

 by another." 



Osborn smiled at his companion's defence of smuggling, but 

 replied, " I can conceive a thousand reasons, my good friend, 

 why the trade in certain things should be totally prohibited, 

 and a high duty for the interests of the state be placed on 

 others. But I am not going to argue with you on all our in- 

 stitutions; merely this I will say, that when we entrust to 

 certain men the power of making laws, we are bound to obey 

 those laws when they are made ; and it were but candid and 

 just to suppose that those who had made them after long deli- 

 beration, did so for the general good of the whole." 



"For their own villanous ends," answered Warde; "for 

 their own selfish interests. The good of the whole ! What 

 is it in the eyes of any of these lawgivers but the good of a 

 party?" 



" But do you not think," asked the young officer, " that we 

 ourselves, who are not lawgivers, judge their actions but too 

 often under the influence of the very motives we attribute to 

 them? Has party no share in our own bosoms? Has selfish- 

 ness, have views of our own interests, in opposition either to 

 the interests of others or of the general weal, no part in the 

 judgment that we form? Each man carps at that which suits 

 him not and strives to change it, without the slightest care 

 whether, in so doing, he be not bringing ruin on the heads of 

 thousands. But as to what you said just now of my being 

 sent hither to hunt down the smuggler, such is not the case. 

 I am sent to lend my aid to the civil power when called upon 

 to do so, but nothing more; and we all know that the civil 

 power has proved quite ineffective in stopping a system which 

 began by violation of a fiscal law, and has gone on to outrages 

 the most brutal and the most daring. I shall not step beyond 



