SMUGGLERS, in law, those persons who conceal or run prohibited goods, or goods that have not paid his majesty's customs.
SMUGGLING is restrained by a great variety of statutes, which inflict pecuniary penalties and seizure of the goods for clandestine smuggling; and affix the guilt of felony, with transportation for seven years, upon more open, daring, and avowed practices; but the last of them, 19 Geo. II. c. 34. is for this purpose instar omnium; for it makes all forcible acts of smug-
smuggling, carried on in defiance of the laws, or even in disguise to evade them, felony without benefit of clergy: enacting, that if three or more persons shall assemble, with fire-arms or other offensive weapons, to assist in the illegal exportation or importation of goods, or in rescuing the same after seizure, or in rescuing offenders in custody for such offences; or shall pass with such goods in disguise; or shall wound, shoot at, or assault any officers of the revenue when in the execution of their duty; such persons shall be felons, without the benefit of clergy. As to that branch of the statute which required any person, charged upon oath as a smuggler, under pain of death, to surrender himself upon proclamation, it seems to be expired; as the subsequent statutes, which continue the original act to the present time, do in terms continue only so much of the said act as relates to the punishment of the offenders, and not to the extraordinary method of apprehending or causing them to surrender: and for offences of this positive species, where punishment (though necessary) is rendered so by the laws themselves, which, by imposing high duties on commodities, increase the temptation to evade them, we cannot surely be too cautious in inflicting the penalty of death.