“It was only a few days since that a party of coast-blockade men (we believe belonging to the Tower, No. 61) made common cause with the smugglers, and they walked off altogether!”
Exactly! The sheer madness of the Government in maintaining the extraordinary high duties, and of adding always another force to existing services, designed to suppress the smugglers’ trade, was sufficiently evident to all who would not refuse to see. When commodities in great demand with all classes were weighted with duties so heavy that few persons could afford to purchase those that had passed through His Majesty’s Custom-houses, two things might have been foreseen: that the regularised imports would, under the most favourable circumstances, inevitably decrease; and that the smuggling which had already been notoriously increasing by leaps and bounds for a century past would be still further encouraged to supply those articles at a cheap rate, which the Government’s policy had rendered unattainable by the majority of people.
An account printed by order of the House of Commons in the beginning of 1825 gave details of all customable commodities seized during the last three years by the various establishments formed for the prevention of smuggling: the Coastguard, or Preventive Water-guard; the Riding-officers; and the revenue cruisers and ships of war.
In that period the following articles were seized and dealt with:
Tobacco 902,684¼ lb. Snuff 3,000 ,, Brandy 135,000 gallons. Rum 253 ,, Gin 227,000 ,, Whisky 10,500 ,, Tea 19,000 lb. Silk 42,000 yards. India handkerchiefs 2,100 pieces. Leghorn hats 23 Cards 3,600 packs. Timber 10,000 pieces. Stills 75
The cost of making these seizures, and dealing with them, was put as follows:
£ _s._ _d._ Law expenses 29,816 19 4¾ Storage, rent of warehouses, etc. 18,875 14 10½ Salaries, cooperage, casks, repairs, 1,533,708 4 10 etc. Rewards to officers, etc. 488,127 2 11½ £2,070,528 2 0¾
The produce of all these articles sold was £282,541 8_s._ 5¾_d._; showing a loss to the nation, in attempting during that period to suppress smuggling, of considerably over one million and three quarters sterling.
This return of seizures provides an imposing array of figures, but, amazing as those figures are by themselves, they would be still more so if it were possible to place beside them an exact return of the goods successfully run, in spite of blockades and preventive services. Then we should see these figures fade into insignificance beside the enormous bulk of goods that came into the country and paid no dues.