SMUGGLING is the offense of importing or exporting goods prohibited. or without paying the duties imposed on goods not prohibited. The offense in general leads to for feiture of the goods. If goods are imported to defraud the revenue, treble value of the goods is forfeited. Many of the offenses connected with smuggling are felonies, and punished with severity under the customs' consolidati•n net.. high protective tariffs separate the industry of adjoining countries, smugglers are certain to abound; no prohibitory decrees can keep the goods nut. It was in vain that Napoleon fulminated the Berlin and Milan decrees for closing nil continental ports against British shipping; British goods were landed at Salonica, passed on horseback through Hungary to Vienna, and thence, distributed in all directions. Similarly, French manufactures reached Eng land, often most circuitously: some a year in transit by way of Smyrna; others, via Archangel, after two years' journey. A vast cost was incurred in England in maintain ing a coast guard and preventive service; but so long as smuggled glmods could be sold at much lower prices than those at which they could be lawfully imported, so long would it be absolutely impossible wholly to suppress the traffic. The duties on French
I goods evaded in 1831, by the aid of smuggling, were estimated at £800,000. The true remedy for smuggling is a free, or, at least, very liberal tariff, without any prohibitive rates. Since the adoption of free trade by Great Britain, its coast-guard has ceased' to have any preventive duties to perform, and has been converted into the far better insti tution of a defense for the coasts from foreign foes, a reserve of trained men for the sea , service, and last, though far from least, a branch of skillful auxiliaries ready to aid any ship thrown in distress upon the British coast. The reading instance of smuggling, so ligland or Englishmen are concerned, is the great amount of contraband traffic from Gibraltar into Spain.