GROWTH OF TEA AND TOBACCO SMUGGLING IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY—REPRESSIVE
LAWS A FAILURE
SIDE by side with the export smuggling of wool, the import smuggling of
tobacco and tea grew and throve amazingly in later ages. Every one,
knowingly or unsuspectingly, smoked tobacco and drank tea that had paid
no duty.
“Great Anna” herself, who was among the earliest to yield to the refining
influence of tea—
Great Anna, whom three realms obey,
Doth sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tay—
in all probability often drank tea which had contributed nothing to the
revenue. Between them tea and tobacco, in the illegal landing of the
goods, found employment for hundreds of hardy seafaring men and stalwart
landsmen, and led to much violence and bloodshed, beside which the
long-drawn annals of the owlers seem almost barren of incident.
Early in the eighteenth century, when continental wars of vast magnitude
were in progress, the list of dutiable articles began to grow quickly,
and concurrently with the growth of this list the already existing tariff
was continually increased. The smugglers’ trade grew with these growths,
and for the first time became a highly organised and widely distributed
trade, involving every class. The time had come at last when every
necessary of daily use was taxed heavily, often far above its ordinary
trading value; and an absurd, and indeed desperate, condition of affairs
had been reached, in which people of all ranks were more or less faced
with the degrading dilemma of being unable to afford many articles
generally consumed by persons of their station in life, or of procuring
them of the smugglers—the “free traders,” as they rightly styled
themselves—often at a mere one-third of the cost to which they would have
been put had their illicit purchasers paid duty.
The Government was, as we now perceive, in the mental perspective
afforded by lapse of time, in the clearly indefensible position of
heavily taxing the needs of the country, and of making certain practices
illegal that tended to supply those needs at much lower rates than those
thus artificially created, and yet of being unable to provide adequate
means by which these generally detested laws could be enforced. It was,
and is, no defence to hold that the revenues thus hoped for were a
sufficient excuse. To create an artificial restraint of trade, to
elevate trading in spite of restraint into a crime, and yet not to
provide an overmastering force that shall secure obedience, if not in one
sense respect, for those unnatural laws, was in itself a course of action
that any impartial historian might well hold to be in itself criminal;
for it led to continual disturbances throughout the country, with
appalling violence, and great loss of life, in conflict, or in the darker
way of secret murder.
But no historian would, on weighing the evidence available, feel
altogether sure of so sweeping an indictment of the eighteenth-century
governance of England. It was corrupt, it was self-seeking, it had no
breadth of view; but the times were well calculated to test the most
Heaven-sent statesmanship. The country, as were all other countries, was
governed for the classes; and governed, as one would conduct a business,
for revenue; whether the revenue was to be applied in conducting foreign
wars, or to find its way plentifully into the pockets of placemen, does
not greatly matter. This misgovernment was a characteristic failing of
the age; and it must, moreover, be recognised that the historian, with
his comprehensive outlook upon the past, spread out, so to speak,
map-like to his gaze, has the advantage of seeing these things as a
whole, and of criticising them as such; while the givers and
administrators of laws were under the obvious disadvantages of each
planning and working for what they considered to be the needs of their
own particular period, with those of the future unknown, and perhaps
uncared for. That there were some few among those in authority who
wrought according to their lights, however feeble might be their
illumination, must be conceded even to that age.
At the opening of this era, when Marlborough’s great victories were yet
fresh, and when the cost of them and of other military glories was
wearing the country threadbare, the most remarkable series of repressive
Acts, directed against smuggling, began. Vessels of very small tonnage
and light draught, being found peculiarly useful to smugglers, the use of
such, even in legalised importing, was strictly forbidden, and no craft
of a lesser burthen than fifteen tons was permitted. This provision, it
was fondly conceived, would strike a blow at smuggling, by rendering it
impossible to slip up narrow and shallow waterways; but this pious
expectation was doomed to disappointment, and the limit was accordingly
raised to thirty tons; and again, in 1721, to forty tons. At the same
time, the severest restrictions were imposed upon boats, in order to cope
with the ten, or even twelve and fourteen-oared galleys, rowed by
determined “free-traders.”
To quote the text of one among these drastic ordinances:
“Any boat built to row with more than four oars, found upon land or
water within the counties of Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, or Sussex, or
in the river Thames, or within the limits of the ports of London,
Sandwich, or Ipswich, or any boat rowing with more than six oars
found either upon land or water, in any other port, or within two
leagues of the coast of Great Britain, shall be forfeited, and every
person using or rowing in such boat shall forfeit £40.”
These prohibitions were, in 1779, in respect of boats to row with more
than six oars, extended to all other English counties; the port of
Bristol only excepted.
As for smuggling craft captured with smuggled goods the way of the
revenue authorities with such was drastic. They were sawn in three
pieces, and then thoroughly broken up.
The futility of these extraordinary steps is emphasised by the report of
the Commissioners of Customs to the Treasury in 1733, that immense
smuggling operations were being conducted in Kent, Sussex, Essex, and
Suffolk. In twelve months, this report declared, 54,000 lb. of tea and
123,000 gallons of brandy had been seized, and still, in spite of these
tremendous losses, the spirit of the smugglers was unbroken, and
smuggling was increasing. An additional force of 106 Dragoons was asked
for, to stiffen that of 185 already patrolling those coasts.
It was clearly required, with the utmost urgency, for such a mere handful
of troops spread over this extended seaboard could scarce be considered a
sufficient backing for the civil force, in view of the determined
encounters continually taking place, in which the recklessness and daring
of the smugglers knew no bounds. Thus, in June 1733, the officers of
customs at Newhaven, attempting to seize ten horses laden with tea, at
Cuckmere, were opposed by about thirty men, armed with pistols and
blunderbusses, who fired on the officers, took them prisoners, and kept
them under guard until the goods were safely carried off.
In August of the same year the riding-officers, observing upwards of
twenty smugglers at Greenhay, most of them on horseback, pluckily essayed
to do their duty and seize the goods, but the smugglers fell furiously
upon them, and with clubs knocked one off his horse, severely wounded
him, and confined him for an hour, while the run was completed. Of his
companions no more is heard. They probably—to phrase it delicately—went
for assistance.
In July 1735, customs officers of the port of Arundel, watching the
coast, expecting goods to be run from a hovering smuggler craft, were
discovered by a gang of more than twenty armed smugglers, anxiously
waiting for the landing, and not disposed for an all-night trial of
endurance in that waiting game. They accordingly seized the officers and
confined them until some boatloads of contraband had been landed and
conveyed away on horseback. In the same month, at Kingston-by-the-Sea,
between Brighton and Shoreham, some officers, primed with information of
a forthcoming run of brandy, and seeking it, found as well ten smugglers
with pistols. Although the smugglers were bold and menacing, the customs
men on this occasion had the better of it, for they seized and duly
impounded the brandy.
A more complicated affair took place on December 6th of the same year,
when some customs officers of Newhaven met a large, well-armed gang of
smugglers, who surrounded them and held them prisoners for an hour and a
half. The same gang then fell in with another party, consisting of three
riding-officers and six Dragoons, and were bold enough to attack them.
Foolish enough, we must also add; for they got the worst of the
encounter, and, fleeing in disorder, were pursued; five—armed with
pistols, swords, and cutlasses, and provided with twelve horses—being
captured.
A fatal encounter took place at Bulverhythe, between Hastings and
Bexhill, in March 1737. It is best read of in the anonymous letter
written to the Commissioners of Customs by a person who, for fear of the
smuggling gangs, was afraid to disclose his real name, and subscribed
himself “Goring.” The letter—whose cold-blooded informing, the work
evidently of an educated, but cruel-minded person, is calculated to make
any reader of generous instincts shiver—is to be found among the customs
correspondence, in the Treasury Papers.
“May it please [your] Honours,—It is not unknown to your Lordships of
the late battle between the Smuglers and Officers at Bulverhide; and
in relation to that Business, if your Honours but please to advise in
the News Papers, that this is expected off, I will send a List of the
names of the Persons that were at that Business, and the places’
names where they are usually and mostly resident. Cat (Morten’s man)
fired first, Morten was the second that fired; the soldiers fired and
killed Collison, wounded Pigon, who is since dead; William Weston was
wounded, but like to recover. Young Mr. Bowra was not there, but his
men and horses were; from your Honours’
“Dutifull and Most faithfull servant,
“GORING.
“There was no foreign persons at this Business, but all were Sussex
men, and may easily be spoke with.
“This [is] the seventh time Morten’s people have workt this winter,
and have not lost anything but one half-hundred [of tea] they gave to
a Dragoon and one officer they met with the first of this winter; and
the Hoo company have lost no goods, although they constantly work,
and at home too, since they lost the seventy hundred-weight. When
once the Smuglers are drove from home they will soon all be taken.
Note, that some say it was Gurr that fired first. You must well
secure Cat, or else your Honours will soon lose the man; the best way
will be to send for him up to London, for he knows the whole Company,
and hath been Morten’s servant two years. There were several young
Chaps with the Smuglers, whom, when taken, will soon discover the
whole Company. The number was twenty-six men. Mack’s horses,
Morten’s, and Hoak’s, were killed, and they lost not half their
goods. They have sent for more goods, and twenty-nine horses set out
from Groombridge this day, about four in the afternoon, and all the
men well armed with long guns.
“And if I hear this is received, I will send your Honours the Places
names where your Honours will intercep the Smuglers as they go to
Market with their Goods, but it must be done by Soldiers, for they go
stronger now than ever. And as for Mr. Gabriel Tompkin, Supervisor
of Dartford, there can be good reason given that Jacob Walter brought
him Goods for three years last past, and it is likewise no dispute of
that matter amongst allmost all the Smuglers. The Bruces and Jacob
fought about that matter and parted Company’s, and Mr. Tompkin was
allway, as most people know, a villain when a Smugler and likewise
Officer. He never was concern’d with any Body but Jacob, and now
Jacob has certainly done with Smugling. I shall not trouble your
Honours with any more Letters if I do not hear from this, and I do
assure your Honours what I now write is truth.
“There are some Smuglers with a good sum of money, and they may pay
for taking; as Thomas Darby, Edward King, John Mackdanie, and others
that are rich.
“The Hoo Company might have been all ruined when they lost their
goods; the Officers and Soldiers knew them all, but they were not
prosecuted, as [they] was not at Groombridge, when some time since a
Custom House Officer took some Tea and Arms too in Bowra’s house at
Groombridge.
“The first of this Winter, the Groombridge Smuglers were forced to
carry their goods allmost all up to Rushmore Hill and Cester Mark,
which some they do now, but Tea sells quick in London now, and Chaps
from London come down to Groombridge allmost every day, as they used
to do last Winter. When once they come to be drove from home, they
will be put to great inconveniences, when they are from their friends
and will lose more Goods than they do now, and be at more Charges.
Do but take up some of the Servants, they will soon rout the Masters,
for the Servants are all poor.
“Young Bowra’s House cost £500 building, and he will pay for looking
up.
“Morten and Bowra sold, last Winter, some-ways, about 3,000 [lb.]
weight a week.”
We hear nothing further of “Goring,” and there is nothing to show who was
the person whose cold malignance appears horribly in every line of his
communication. Any action that may have been officially taken upon it is
also hidden from us. But we may at least gather from it that the
master-men, the employers of the actual smugglers of the goods, were in a
considerable way of business, and already making very large profits. We
see, too, that the smuggling industry was even then well on towards being
a powerful organisation.
Still sterner legislative methods were, accordingly, in the opinion of
the authorities, called for, and the Act of Indemnity of 1736 was the
first result. This was a peculiarly mean and despicable measure, even
for a Revenue Act. There is this excuse—although a small one—for it;
that the Government was increasingly pressed for money, and that the
enormous leakage of customs dues might possibly in some degree be
lessened by stern and not very high-minded laws. By this Act it was
provided that smugglers who desired (whether on trial or not) to obtain a
free pardon for past offences, might do so by fully disclosing them; at
the same time giving the names of their fellows. The especial iniquity
of this lamentable example of frantic legislation, striking as it did at
the very foundations of character in the creation of the informer and the
sneak, is a sad instance of the moral obliquity to which a Government
under stress of circumstances can descend.
The Act further proceeded to deal with backsliders who, having purged
themselves as above, again resumed their evil courses, and it made the
ways of transgressors very hard indeed; for, when captured, they were
charged with not only their present offence, but also with that for which
they had compounded with the Dev— that is to say, with the law. And,
being so charged, and duly convicted, their case was desperate; for if
the previous offence had carried with it, on conviction, a sentence of
transportation (as many smuggling offences did: among them the carrying
of firearms by three, or more men, while engaged in smuggling goods), the
second brought a sentence of death.
With regard to the position of the pardoned smuggler who had earned his
pardon by thus peaching on his fellows, it is not too much to
say—certainly so far as the more ferocious smuggling gangs of Kent and
Sussex were concerned—that by so doing he had already earned his capital
sentence; for the temper of these men was such, and the risks they were
made to run by these ferocious Acts were so great, that they would
not—and, in a way of looking at these things, could not—suffer an
informer to live.
Thus, even the additional inducements offered to informers by
statute—including a reward of £50 each for the discovery and conviction
of two or more accomplices—very generally failed to obtain results.
Many other items of unexampled severity were included in this Act, and in
the yet more drastic measures of 1745 and the following year. By these
it was provided that persons found loitering within five miles of the
sea-coast, or any navigable river, might be considered suspicious
persons; and they ran the risk of being taken before a magistrate, who
was empowered, on any such person being unable to give a satisfactory
account of himself, to commit him to the House of Correction, there to be
whipped and kept at hard labour for any period not exceeding one month.
In 1746, assembling to run contraband goods was made a crime punishable
with death as a felon, and counties were made liable for revenue losses.
Smuggled goods seized and afterwards rescued entailed a fine of £200 upon
the county; a revenue officer beaten by smugglers cost the county £40; or
if killed, £100; with the provision that the county should be exempt if
the offenders were convicted within six months.
As regards the offenders themselves, if they failed to surrender within
forty days and were afterwards captured, the person who captured them was
entitled to a reward of £500.
Dr. Johnson’s definition of a smuggler appears on the title-page of the
present volume. It is not a flattering testimonial to character; but, on
the other hand, his opinion of a Commissioner of Excise—and such were the
sworn enemies of smugglers—was much more unfavourable. Such an one was
bracketed by the doctor with a political pamphleteer, or what he termed
“a scribbler for a party,” as one of “the two lowest of human beings.”
Without the context in which these judgments are now placed, it would be
more than a little difficult to trace their reasoning, which sounds as
little sensible as it would be to declare at one and the same time a
burglar to be a dangerous pest and a policeman a useless ornament. But
if smugglers can be proved from these pages wicked and reckless men, so
undoubtedly shall we find the Commissioners of Excise and Customs, in
their several spheres, appealing to the basest of human instincts, and
thus abundantly worthy of Johnson’s censure.
The shifts and expedients of the Commissioners of Customs for the
suppression of smuggling were many and ingenious, and none was more
calculated to perform the maximum of service to the Revenue with the
minimum of cost than the commissioning of privateers, authorised to
search for, to chase, and to capture if possible any smuggling craft.
“Minimum of cost” is indeed not the right expression for use here, for
the cost and risks to the customs establishment were _nil_. It should be
said here that, although the Acts of Parliament directed against
smuggling were of the utmost stringency, they were not always applied
with all the severity possible to be used; and, on the other hand,
customs officers and the commanders of revenue cutters were well advised
to guard against any excess of zeal in carrying out their instructions.
To chase and capture a vessel that every one knew perfectly well to be a
smuggler, and then to find no contraband aboard, because, as a matter of
fact, it had been carefully sunk at some point where it could easily be
recovered at leisure, was not only not the way to promotion as a zealous
officer; but was, on the contrary, in the absence of proof that
contraband had been carried, a certain way to official disfavour. And it
was also, as many officers found to their cost, the way into actions at
law, with resultant heavy damages not infrequently awarded against them.
It was, indeed, a scandal that these public servants, who assuredly
rarely ever brought to, or overhauled, a vessel without reasonable and
probable cause, should have been subject to such contingencies, without
remedy of any kind.
The happy idea of licensing private adventurers to build and equip
vessels to make private war upon smuggling craft, and to capture them and
their cargoes, was an extension of the original plan of issuing letters
of marque to owners of vessels for the purpose of inflicting loss upon an
enemy’s commerce; but persons intending to engage upon this private
warfare against smuggling had, in the first instance, to give security to
the Commissioners of a diligence in the cause thus undertaken, and to
enter into business details respecting the cargoes captured. It was,
however, not infrequently found, in practice, that these privateers very
often took to smuggling on their own account, and that, under the
protective cloak of their ostensible affairs, they did a very excellent
business; while, to complete this picture of failure, those privateers
that really did keep to their licensed trade generally contrived to lose
money and to land their owners into bankruptcy.