persons who import or export prohibited goods without paying the duties appointed by the law. When we consider the nature, and still more the history of mankind, we must allow that the enacting of severe penal laws is not the way to prevent crimes. It is indeed much to be wished that there were no such thing as a political crime; for the generality of men, but especially the poorer classes, not discerning the propriety or utility of such laws, consider them as oppressive and tyrannical, and never hesitate to violate them when they can do it with impunity. Instead therefore of punishing smugglers, it would be much better to remove the temptation. But the high duties which have been imposed upon the importation of many different sorts of foreign goods, in order to discourage their consumption in Great Britain, have in many cases served only to encourage smuggling; and in all cases have reduced the revenue of the customs below what more moderate duties would have afforded. The saying of Dr. Swift, that in the arithmetic of the customs two and two, instead of making four, make sometimes only one, holds perfectly true with regard to such heavy duties, which never could have been imposed, had not the mercantile system taught us, in many cases, to employ taxation as an instrument, not of revenue, but of monopoly.

The bounties which are sometimes given upon the exportation of home produce and manufactures, and the drawbacks which are paid upon the re-exportation of the greater part of foreign goods, have given occasion to many frauds, and to a species of smuggling more destructive of the public revenue than any other. In order to obtain the bounty or drawback, the goods, it is well known, are sometimes shipped and sent to sea, but soon afterwards clandestinely re-landed in some other part of the country.

Heavy duties being imposed upon almost all goods imported, our merchant importers smuggle as much, and make entry of as little as they can. Our merchant exporters, on the contrary, make entry of more than they export; sometimes out of vanity, and to pass for great dealers in goods which pay no duty; and sometimes to gain a bounty or a drawback. Our exports, in consequence of these different frauds, appear upon the custom-house books greatly to overbalance our imports; to the unspeakable comfort of those

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1 See Scott's Biographical Memoirs of eminent Novelists, vol. i. p. 294. 2 For more circumstantial details of the life of Smollett, the reader is referred to the narratives of Dr. Anderson and Dr. Moore. politicians who measure the national prosperity by what they call the balance of trade.