“If you had taken the left-hand road you would never have seen next morning.” “Why so?” “There was a large cargo of ‘run’ goods being transported that night, and you would have met it.” “What of that?” “What of that? You would have been chucked over the cliffs.” “But how could they suppose I would peach?” “Sir! They’d ha’ took good care you shouldn’t a’ had the chance!” I was sitting in a little seaport tavern in Cornwall one winter’s evening, over a great fire, with a company of very old “salts,” gossiping, yarning, singing, when up got a tough old fellow with a face the colour of mahogany, and dark, piercing eyes, and the nose of a hawk. Planting his feet wide apart, as though on deck in a rolling sea, he began to sing in stentorian tones a folk-song relative to a highwayman in the old times, when Sir John Fielding, the blind magistrate at Westminster, put down highway robbery. The ballad told of the evil deeds of this mounted robber of the highways, and of how he was captured by “Fielding’s crew” and condemned to die. It concluded:-- “When I am dead, borne to my grave, A gallant funeral may I have; Six highwaymen to carry me, With good broad swords and sweet liberty. “Six blooming maidens shall bear my pall, Give them white gloves and pink ribbons all; And when I’m dead they’ll tell the truth, I was a wild and a wicked youth.” At the conclusion of each verse the whole assembly repeated the two final lines. It was a striking scene; their eyes flashed, their colour mounted, they hammered with their fists on the table and with their heels on the floor. Some, in the wildness of their excitement, sprang up, thrust their hands through their white or grey hair, and flourished them, roaring like bulls. When the song was done, and composure had settled over the faces of the excited men, one of them said apologetically to me, “You see, sir, we 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.