The seaside holiday-maker of that age was an easy prey of pretended smugglers, cunning rascals who traded upon that most wide-spread of human failings, the love of a bargain, no matter how illegitimately it may be procured. The lounger on the seaside parades of that time was certain, sooner or later, to be approached by a mysterious figure with an indefinable air of mystery and a semi-nautical rig, who, with many careful glances to right and left, and in a hoarse whisper behind a secretive hand, told a tale of smuggled brandy or cigars, watches or silks. “Not ’arf the price you’d pay for ’em in the shops, guv’nor,” the shameless impostor would say, producing a bundle of cigars, “but the real thing; better than them wot most of the shops keep. I see you’re a gent. as knows a good smoke. You shall ’ave ’em”—at some preposterously low price. And generally the greenhorn did have them; finding, when he came to smoke the genuine Flor de Cabbage he had bought, that they would have been dear at any price. To that complexion of mean fraud did the old smuggling traditions of courage, adventure, and derring-do come at last! The modern coastguard, known technically as the First Naval Reserve, is still under Admiralty control, but proposals are, it is understood, now afoot for entirely altering its status, and for reorganising it as a purely civil force, under the orders of the customs and excise authorities. At present the coastguard establishment numbers some 4,200 officers and men, and is understood to cost £260,000 a year. It is not, perhaps, generally understood that the coastguardman is really a man-o’-war’s man, attached to a particular ship, and liable at any moment of national emergency to be called to rejoin his ship, and to proceed on active service. It is not really to be supposed that the coastguard succeed in entirely suppressing smuggling, even in our own times. Few are the articles that are now subject to duty, and the temptation is consequently not now very great. Also, the landing of such goods as tea, tobacco, and spirits in bulk would readily be detected; but smuggling of spirits and of tobacco in small quantities is commercially remunerative while the duties are as high as from 11_s._ to 17_s._ a gallon, and from 3_s._ 6_d._ to 5_s._ a pound in respect of tobacco and cigars; while large quantities of that entirely modern article, saccharine, on which there is a duty of one shilling and threepence an ounce (with a minimum legal weight on import of eleven pounds, designed to render clandestine traffic in it difficult), must, in the very nature of things, be illegally introduced. That there will be a phenomenal increase of smuggling when the inevitable happens and protection of the country’s trade against the foreigner is instituted, seems certain. It will seem like old times come again. * * * * * THE END INDEX