The real cost of military glory was aptly shown by a caricaturist of this period, who illustrated the general rise of prices consequent upon war in the following incident of an old country-woman buying a halfpenny candle at a chandler’s shop: “Price has gone up,” said the shopkeeper curtly, when she tendered the money. “What’s that for, then?” asked the old woman. “On account of the war, ma’am.” “Od rot ’em! do they fight by candlelight?” she not unnaturally asked. Housekeepers of the present day may well enter—although somewhat ruefully—into the humour of this simple story, for in the great and continued rise of every commodity since the great Boer War, it is most poignantly illustrated for us. In short, the people who pay for the glory see nothing of it, and derive nothing from it. How entirely true were those witty phrases of Sydney Smith we may easily guess from the mere rough statement that there were, in 1787, no fewer than 1,425 articles liable to duty (very many of them taxed at several times their market value), bringing in £6,000,000 a year. In 1797 the customs laws filled six large folio volumes. The total number of Customs Acts prior to the accession of George the Third was 800, but no fewer than 1,300 were added between the years 1760 and 1813, and newer Acts, partly repealing and partly adding to older enactments, were continually being added to this vast mass of chaotic legislation down to the middle of the Victorian era, until even experts were frequently baffled as to the definite legal position of many given articles. Finally—it is typical of our English amateur way of doing things—in 1876, when so-called “Free Trade” had come in, and few articles remained customable, the customs laws were consolidated. Many years before, at one swoop, Sir Robert Peel had removed the duties from four hundred different dutiable articles, leaving, however, many hundreds of others more or less heavily assessed. In consequence of this relief from taxation, smuggling rapidly decreased, and the Commissioners of Customs were enabled to report: “With the reduction of duties, and the removal of all needless and vexatious restrictions, smuggling has greatly diminished, and the public sentiment with regard to it has undergone a very considerable change. The smuggler is no longer an object of general sympathy, as a hero of romance; and people are beginning to awaken to a perception of the fact that his offence is not only a fraud on the revenue, but a robbery of the fair trader. Smuggling is now almost entirely confined to tobacco, spirits, and watches.” No fewer than four hundred and fifty other dutiable articles were struck off the list in 1845, and the Cobdenite era of Free Trade, to which, it was expected, all other nations would speedily be converted, had opened.