SMUGGLING.
Smuggling is a real crime against the sovereign and the nation; but its
punishment should not be one of disgrace, because its commission incurs
no disgrace in public opinion.
But why does this crime never entail disgrace upon its author, seeing
that it is a theft against the prince, and consequently against the
nation? I answer, that offences which men do not consider can be
committed against themselves do not interest them enough to produce
public indignation against their perpetrator. Smuggling is an offence
of this character. Men in general, on whom remote consequences make
very feeble impressions, do not perceive the harm that smuggling can
do them, nay, often they enjoy a present advantage from it. They only
perceive the injury done to the sovereign; they are not interested,
therefore, in withdrawing their favour from a smuggler as much as they
are in doing so from a man who commits a theft in private life, who
forges a signature, or brings upon them other evils. The principle is
self-evident, that every sensitive being only interests himself in the
evils which he knows. This crime arises from the law itself; since the
benefit it promises increases with the increase of the import duty, and
therefore the temptation and the facility of committing it increases with
the circumference of territory to be guarded and the small size of the
prohibited wares. The penalty of losing both the prohibited goods, and
whatever effects are found with them, is most just; but its efficacy will
be greater in proportion as the import duty is lower, because men only
incur risks relative to the advantage derivable from the prosperous issue
of their undertaking.
But ought such a crime to be let go unpunished in the case of a man who
has no effects to lose? No: there are kinds of smuggling of so much
importance to the revenue (which is so essential and so difficult a part
of a good system of laws), that such a crime deserves a considerable
punishment, even imprisonment or servitude; but imprisonment and
servitude conformable to the nature of the crime itself. For example,
the prison of the tobacco-smuggler ought not to be the same as that of
the assassin or the thief; and the labours of the former, limited to the
work and service of the very treasury he wished to defraud, will be the
punishments most conformable to the nature of his crime.