Sometimes the seaman’s ventures consisted of goods entrusted to him by some merchant, to sell on commission at Lisbon or Barbados; sometimes he had purchased them himself; for not a few of the seamen were capitalists on a small scale, and most of them had formed regular connections with the merchants. The goods once sold in foreign ports, others were of course purchased there. Silks, wines, tobacco, numberless things which by a little ingenuity could be smuggled into Falmouth duty free; and in order to facilitate disposing of these imported bargains, a whole corps of female pedlars was in existence, locally named “troachers,” who trudged the country and hawked about the goods of Jamaica or New York from farm house to country mansion. There was thus at Falmouth an irregular trade of great value. Every seaman in the employment of the Post-Office was engaged in it. To most it had formed a chief inducement to enter the service; for the wages were very low, and would not of themselves have attracted men away from the Revenue Service or the Royal Navy. More than once during the last few years of the century suggestions had been made of scandals connected with the Falmouth trade; and hints had been thrown out that a stringent inquiry, conducted on the spot, might bring to light facts which would explain the frequent captures of Packets. The West India merchants, in guarded language, “prayed that ... any abuses in the loading of the Packets ... might be remedied”; but other persons spoke plainly what was here only hinted; and roundly declared that it was sometimes very profitable to be captured, and that the officers who were the most often captured were the most quickly growing rich. The charge soon took clearer shape. It was said that, in accordance with a common practice, the goods received on board the Packets at Falmouth were insured in England for the double voyage, out and home. If then the goods were sold in the West Indies, it would be a possible thing for the crew to remit the purchase money in bills by some safe channel; and to surrender themselves quietly to the first Privateer they met. They ran the risk of spending some years in a French prison; but one cannot grow rich without some risk, and there was a good chance that the Privateer would put them ashore in their own boat. When they once reached England, they were secure from detection. They declared before the Insurance Company that the Privateer had taken from them large quantities of goods which they had not succeeded in selling abroad, or which they had purchased there hoping to sell at home. They claimed the value of those goods, and by the next Packet received that value a second time in the bills which they had themselves remitted. This was the charge against the Falmouth officers,—a charge involving so much base dishonesty that one hesitates before accepting it as true of even the smallest section of the Service at which it was levelled.