Captain Brenton, in his “History of the Royal Navy,” pays a very high, but not extravagant, compliment to these daring fellows: “These men,” he says, “are as remarkable for their skill in seamanship as for their audacity in the hour of danger; their local knowledge has been highly advantageous to the Navy, into which, however, they never enter, unless sent on board ships of war as a punishment for some crime committed against the revenue laws. They are hardy, sober, and faithful to each other, beyond the generality of seamen; and, when shipwreck occurs, have been known to perform deeds not exceeded in any country in the world; probably unequalled in the annals of other maritime powers.” Such men as these, besides being, in the rustic opinion, very much of heroes, engaged in an unequal warfare, against heavy odds, with a hateful, ogreish abstraction called “the Government,” which existed only for the purpose of taxing and suppressing the poor, for the benefit of the rich, were regarded as benefactors; for they supplied the downtrodden, overtaxed people with better articles, at lower prices, than could be obtained in the legitimate way of traders who had paid excise duties. There was probably a considerable basis of truth to support this view, for there is no doubt that duty-paid goods were largely adulterated. To adulterate his spirits, his tea, and his tobacco was the nearest road to any considerable profit that the tradesman could then make. Things being of this complexion, it would have been the sheerest pedantry to refuse to purchase the goods the free-traders supplied at such alluringly low prices, and of such indubitably excellent quality; and to give retail publicans and shopkeepers and private consumers their due, as sensible folk, untroubled by supersensitive consciences, they rarely did refuse. Adam Smith, in the course of his writings on political economy, nearly a century and a half ago, stated the popular view about smuggling and the purchase of smuggled goods: “To pretend to have any scruple about buying smuggled goods, though a manifest encouragement to the violation of the revenue laws, and to the perjury which almost always attends it, would in most countries be regarded as one of those pedantic pieces of hypocrisy which, instead of gaining credit with anybody, seems only to expose the person who affects to practise it to the suspicion of being a greater knave than most of his neighbours.” From even the most charitable point of view, that person who was so eccentric as to refuse to take advantage of any favourable opportunity of purchasing cheaply such good stuff as might be offered to him, and had not paid toll to the Revenue, was a prig.