Smith himself looked upon the smuggler with a great deal of sympathy, and regarded him as “a person who, though no doubt blamable for violating the laws of his country, is frequently incapable of violating those of natural justice, and would have been in every respect an excellent citizen had not the laws of his country made that a crime which nature never meant to be so.” Very few, indeed, were those voices raised against the practice of smuggling. Among them, however, was that of John Wesley, perhaps the most influential of all, especially in the West of England. The clergy in general might rail against the smugglers, but there were few among them who did not enjoy the right sort of spirits which, singularly enough, could only commonly be obtained from these shy sources; and there was a certain malignant satisfaction to any properly constituted smuggler in using the tower, or perhaps even the pulpit, of a parish church as temporary spirit-cellar, and in undermining the parson’s honesty by the present of a tub. Few were those reverend persons who repudiated this sly suggestion of co-partnery, and those few who felt inclined so to do were generally silenced by the worldly wisdom of their parish clerks, who, forming as it were a connecting link between things sacred and profane, could on occasion inform a clergyman that his most respected churchwarden was financially interested in the success of some famous run of goods just notoriously brought off. Among those few clergy who actively disapproved of these things we must include the Rev. Robert Hardy, somewhat multitudinously beneficed in Sussex and elsewhere in the beginning of the nineteenth century. He published in 1818 a solemn pamphlet entitled: “Serious Cautions and Advice to all concerned in Smuggling; setting forth the Mischiefs attendant upon that Traffic; together with some exhortations to Patience and Contentment under the Difficulties and Trials of Life. By Robert Hardy, A.M., Vicar of the united parishes of Walberton and Yapton, and of Stoughton, in Sussex; and Chaplain to H.R.H. the Prince Regent.” The author did not by any means blink the difficulties or dangers, but was, it will be conceded, far too sanguine when he wrote the following passage, in the hope of his words suppressing the trade: “The calamities with which the Smuggler is now perpetually visited, by Informations and Fines, and Seizures, and Imprisonments, will, I trust, if properly considered, prevail upon the rich to discountenance, and upon the poor to forbear from, a traffic which, _in addition to the sin of it_, carries in its train so many evils, and mischiefs, and sorrows.” His voice we may easily learn, in perusing the history of smuggling at and after the date of his pamphlet, was as that of one crying in the wilderness. Its sound may have pleased himself, but it was absolutely wasted upon those who smuggled, and those who purchased smuggled goods. “Smugglers,” he said, “are of three descriptions: