People were beginning to wake from the torpor in which they had hitherto slumbered, with regard to locomotion, and on 12th October an influential meeting of merchants and others was held at the Jerusalem Coffee House to hear a Captain Barber unfold his scheme for a quicker communication with India. This was that passengers and goods should be taken by steam to Cairo, and thence, by omnibuses and vans to Suez—as was afterwards done by Waghorn, who was already forming an Overland Mail (see _Times_, 29 Nov., 1838). With the very heavy duties on foreign goods, of course smuggling was very rife, and the Inland Revenue was defrauded on every possible occasion by the sharp wits opposed to it; and the difficulty of conviction, unless the smuggler was caught red-handed, was very considerable. The following is a case in point, and for sheer impudence, it bears the palm. 17 Oct.: MANSION HOUSE.—A Scotchwoman, named Frances Bodmore, the wife of a Frenchman, who has been engaged in smuggling, appeared to answer for her husband, on a charge of having two two-gallon bottles of French brandy in his possession, without having paid the duty thereon. Child, the constable, said he went into the house of the Frenchman, in Sugarloaf Court; and, while searching for other things, found the bottles under the pillows of the bed. The Lord Mayor: Why don’t your husband attend? Woman: Why, because he knows nothing at all about the business. I think he’d be a great fool to come here without knowing for what. The Lord Mayor: How do you get your living? Woman: Why, as well as I can. I don’t get it without running some risk for it, you may depend. The Lord Mayor: We know you to be a consummate smuggler. Woman: Whatever my business may be, I generally get through it like a trump. There’s no nonsense about me. The Lord Mayor (to the Revenue officer): She is constantly backward and forward between this and France, I daresay. Woman: Yes, my Lord, I travel a good deal for the benefit of my health, and I always come back stouter than I go. (Laughter.) Officer: She’s perfectly well known, my Lord, as one of a number that are commissioned by parties in London. They are all very clever, and elude us in every possible way, and the steamers afford them great facilities. The Lord Mayor: I can’t send this woman to prison, and she knows it well, but I shall punish every experienced smuggler I catch as severely as I can. They cheat the fair trader, they endanger the vessel in which they come over, and they cheat the Government. Woman: Ay, my Lord, that’s the cleverest thing of all. Only think of cheating the Government! Well, well, I wonder where the villainy of man will end! (Laughter.) The Lord Mayor: Take care of yourself. You think you are secure. You may go now.