SMUGGLING is the clandestine introduction of prohibited goods, or the illicit introduction of goods by the evasion of the legal duties. Excessive duties present an overwhelming temptation to men to evade them ; and the law loses a great part of its moral influence when it first tempts to violation of it and then punishes the offence. The true remedy is a wise tariff. It annihilates at once a traffic which no inge nuity can ever put down ; for all experience proves that so long as a profit can be made by smuggling sufficiently high to counterbalance the necessary risk, it will not fail to flourish. The decrees of Berlin and Milan, instead of annihilating commerce, only forced it into extra ordinary channels. Silk from Italy, for example, instead of being received in England by the most direct means, often arrived by way of Archangel and Smyrna ; in the former instance being two years, and in the latter twelve months, on its passage. Sugar, coffee, tobacco, and cotton-twist were despatched from England to Salonica, and thence conveyed by horses and mules through Servia and Hungary to Vienna, from which place they were distributed over the Continent, in defiance of the rigorous decrees of Napoleon ; it might happen that coffee was consumed at Calais which, instead of being sent direct from London, arrived by the above circuitous route.
We have only to examine the tariff of any country to know if smuggling is practised ; and if a bad system of commercial policy has been long pursued, there the smuggler will be found. The contra bandista of Spain figures in novels and tales of adventure. In no country is the illicit trade so general and extensive. The exports to Gibraltar from England are very large, and a great proportion is intro duced by smugglers into the interior. Nearly the whole of the tobacco imported into Gibraltar is smuggled into Spain, where the article is one of the royal monopolies. On the French frontier the illicit trade is equally active.
The vicinity of France and England, and the injudicious character of their respective tariffs, long encouraged smuggling to a large extent on both sides of the Channel.
The reduction of the duties on silks, tea, spirits, wines, and numerous other articles, has done more to repress smuggling than all the efforts of the revenue officers aided by a large armed force.
The present acts relating to smuggling are 3 & 4 Wm. IV. c. 53, and 4 & 5 Wm. IV. c. 13.