However, in the eighteenth century our forefathers, for a
variety of reasons, greatly preferred the smuggled goods, and many a
squire or wealthy landowner, many a magistrate even, found it by no
means to his disadvantage if on occasion he should be a little blind; a
still tongue might not unlikely be rewarded by the mysterious arrival of
an anker of good French brandy, or by something in the silk, or lace, or
tea line for the ladies of his household. People saw no harm in such
doings in those good old days; defrauding the revenue was fair game. And
if a "gauger" lost his life in some one or other of the bloody
encounters that frequently took place between the smugglers and the
revenue officers, why, so much the worse for the "gauger." He was an
unnecessarily officious sort of a person, who had better have kept out
of the way. In fact, popular sentiment was entirely with the smugglers,
who by the bulk of the population were regarded with the greatest
admiration. Smuggling, indeed, was so much a recognised trade or
profession that there was actually a fixed rate at which smuggled goods
were conveyed from place to place; for instance, for tea or tobacco from
the Solway to Edinburgh the tariff was fifteen shillings per box or
bale.
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