The Smugglers: Picturesque Chapters in the Story of an Ancient Craft - Tapa blanda

PREFACE Opinions have ever been divided on the question of the morality, or the immorality, of smuggling. This is not, in itself, remarkable, since that subject on which all men think alike has not yet been discovered; but whatever the views held upon the question of the rights and wrongs of the “free-traders’” craft, they have long since died down into abstract academic discussion. Smuggling is, indeed, not dead, but it is not the potent factor it once was, and to what extent Governments are justified in taxing or restricting in any way the export or the import of goods will not again become a living question in this country until the impending Tariff Reform becomes law. There have been those who, reading the proofs of this book, have variously found in it arguments for, and others arguments against, Protection; but, as a sheer matter of fact, there are in these pages no studied arguments either way, and facts are here presented just as they are retrieved from half-forgotten records, with no other ulterior object than that of entertainment. But if these pages also serve to show with what little wisdom we are, and generally have been, governed, they may not be without their uses. England, it may surely be gathered, here and elsewhere, is what she is by sheer force of dogged middle-class character, and in spite of her statesmen and lawgivers.