ggling "runs": there is hardly a
cliff or piece of high ground that has not been employed for the purpose
of giving a signal to the approaching craft as they came on through the
night over the dark waters. There are indeed very few villages in
proximity to the sea that have not been concerned in these smuggling
ventures and taken active interest in the landing of bales and casks.
The sympathy of the country-side was with the smuggling fraternity.
Magistrates were at times terrorised, juries were too frightened to
convict. In short, the evil had grown to such an extent that it was a
most difficult problem for any Government to be asked to deal with,
needing as it did a very efficient service both of craft and men afloat,
and an equally able and incorruptible guard on land that could not be
turned from its purpose either by fear or bribery. We shall see from the
following chapters how these two organisations--by sea and land--worked.

If we exclude fiction, the amount of literature which has been
published on smuggling is exceedingly small. Practically the whole of
the following pages is the outcome of personal research among
original, authentic manuscripts and official documents. Included under
this head may be cited the Minutes of the Board of Customs, General
Letters of the Board to the Collectors and Controllers of the various
Out-ports, Out-port Letters to the Board, the transcripts from
shorthand notes of Assizes and Promiscuous Trials of Smugglers, a
large quantity of MSS. of remarkable incidents connected with
smuggling, miscellaneous notes collected on the subject in the Library
of the Customs House, instructions issued at different times to
Customs officers and commanders of cruisers, General Orders issued to
the Coastguard, together with a valuable precis (unpublished) of the
existing documents in the many Customs Houses along the English coast
made in the year 1911 by the Librarian to the Board of Customs on a
round of visits to the different ports for that purpose. These
researches have been further supplemented by other documents in the
British Museum and elsewhere.

This volume, therefore, contains within its pages a very large amount
of material hitherto unpublished, and, additional to the details
gathered together regarding smuggling methods, especial attention has
been paid to collect all possible information concerning the Revenue
sloops and cutters so frequently alluded to in those days as cruisers.