Another famous instance of present-day smuggling was brought to light in the Queen’s Bench division in 1883. From the evidence then given, it appeared that the smugglers had inaugurated a systematic method of conveying tobacco from Rotterdam, and that, by no means content with the old-fashioned practice of having a single buyer and seller, they had regularly appointed agents, whom they stationed at different ports in the United Kingdom. On the arrival of the tobacco, the agent or agents communicated by telegraph with the principals in the affair, and by means of an arranged cipher, gave information as to when the goods arrived and when they had passed the Customs’ officers undetected. The principal was an Irishman, who carried on business as a tobacco merchant. He had a brother who traded in flax-seed. It occurred to the former that importations of tobacco which had evaded the duty would be much more profitable than duty-paid importations, and what more natural than that his brother’s barrels of flax-seed would form a not easily detected mode of conveyance? The course adopted then was this: a large quantity of flax-seed was purchased at Rotterdam, and also a quantity of tobacco. Sixty pounds-weight of the tobacco was rammed firmly down into the bottom of a cask, which was then filled up with flax-seed; and the casks so filled were shipped to this country, and reported and entered as containing flax-seed only. On one occasion, four hundred casks containing tobacco stowed in this way escaped detection; and in April 1882, fourteen hundred pounds of tobacco were smuggled into the country in twenty-five casks, each containing half a hundredweight of tobacco. Later on in the same month, two thousand pounds of tobacco followed their predecessors, and further consignments occurred in May. At last the crisis came. Somebody, in smuggling parlance, ‘split;’ the officers boarded a ship from Rotterdam, opened the casks, and the nefarious consignment was at last laid bare. Despite the discovery, the Attorney-general, who conducted the case for the Crown, had no little difficulty in bringing the guilt home to the proper parties. The concealed tobacco had all been addressed to fictitious consignees, but the evidence of an accomplice exposed such a state of affairs that the defendant consented to a verdict being entered against him for over six thousand pounds, being treble the value of the goods, of which penalty, however, only one-third was eventually enforced.