be all old smugglers, and have gone agin the law
in our best days."
There is something to be said in extenuation of the wrongfulness of English smuggling.
The customs duties were imposed first in England for the purpose of protecting the coasts against pirates, who made descents on the undefended villages, and kidnapped and carried off children and men to sell as slaves in Africa, or who waylaid merchant vessels and plundered them. But when all danger from pirates ceased, the duties were not only maintained, but made more onerous.
It was consequently felt that there had been a violation of compact on the side of the Crown, and bold spirits entertained no scruple of conscience in carrying on contraband trade. The officers of the Crown no longer proceeded to capture, bring to justice, and hang notorious foreign pirates, but to capture, bring to justice, and hang native seamen and traders. The preventive service became a means of oppression, and not of relief
That is the light in which the bold men of Cornwall regarded it; that is the way in which it was regarded, not by the ignorant seamen only, but by magistrates, country gentlemen, and parsons alike. As an illustration of this, we may quote the story told by the late Rev. R. S. Hawker, for many years vicar of Morwenstow, on the North Cornish coast:—
"It was full six o'clock in the afternoon of an autumn day when a traveller arrived where the road ran along by a sandy beach just above high-water mark.
