“There are some Smuglers with a good sum of money, and they may pay for taking; as Thomas Darby, Edward King, John Mackdanie, and others that are rich. “The Hoo Company might have been all ruined when they lost their goods; the Officers and Soldiers knew them all, but they were not prosecuted, as [they] was not at Groombridge, when some time since a Custom House Officer took some Tea and Arms too in Bowra’s house at Groombridge. “The first of this Winter, the Groombridge Smuglers were forced to carry their goods allmost all up to Rushmore Hill and Cester Mark, which some they do now, but Tea sells quick in London now, and Chaps from London come down to Groombridge allmost every day, as they used to do last Winter. When once they come to be drove from home, they will be put to great inconveniences, when they are from their friends and will lose more Goods than they do now, and be at more Charges. Do but take up some of the Servants, they will soon rout the Masters, for the Servants are all poor. “Young Bowra’s House cost £500 building, and he will pay for looking up. “Morten and Bowra sold, last Winter, some-ways, about 3,000 [lb.] weight a week.” We hear nothing further of “Goring,” and there is nothing to show who was the person whose cold malignance appears horribly in every line of his communication. Any action that may have been officially taken upon it is also hidden from us. But we may at least gather from it that the master-men, the employers of the actual smugglers of the goods, were in a considerable way of business, and already making very large profits. We see, too, that the smuggling industry was even then well on towards being a powerful organisation. Still sterner legislative methods were, accordingly, in the opinion of the authorities, called for, and the Act of Indemnity of 1736 was the first result. This was a peculiarly mean and despicable measure, even for a Revenue Act. There is this excuse—although a small one—for it; that the Government was increasingly pressed for money, and that the enormous leakage of customs dues might possibly in some degree be lessened by stern and not very high-minded laws. By this Act it was provided that smugglers who desired (whether on trial or not) to obtain a free pardon for past offences, might do so by fully disclosing them; at the same time giving the names of their fellows. The especial iniquity of this lamentable example of frantic legislation, striking as it did at the very foundations of character in the creation of the informer and the sneak, is a sad instance of the moral obliquity to which a Government under stress of circumstances can descend.