William and Mary, and good Queen Anne, falling collars, and hats and plumes, and floating wigs and broad-tailed coats, were all gone--bundled away into the great lumber-room of the Past--still, dear reader, there was a good deal of the wooden clock about the mechanism of society.

One of the parts in which rudeness of construction and coarseness of material were most apparent, was in the Customs system of the country, and in the impediments which it met with. The escapement was anything but fine. Nowadays we do things delicately. If we wish to cheat the government, we forge Exchequer bills, or bribe landing-waiters and supervisors, or courteously insinuate to a superior officer that a thousand pounds is not too great a mark of gratitude for enabling us to pocket twenty thousand at the expense of the Customs. If we wish to cheat the public, there is chalk for our milk, grains of paradise for our beer, sago and old rags for our sugar, lime for our linen, and devils' dust to cover our backs. Chemistry and electricity, steam and galvanism, all lend their excellent aid to the cheat, the swindler, and the thief; and if a man is inclined to keep himself within respectable limits, and deceive himself and others at the same time with perfect good faith and due decorum, are there not homœopathy, hydropathy, and mesmerism?

In the days I speak of it was not so. There was a grander roughness and daringness about both our rogues and our theorists. None but a small villain would consent to be a swindler. We had more robbers than cheats; and if a man chose to be an impostor, it was with all the dignity and decision of a Psalmanazor, or a bottle conjuror. Gunpowder and lead were the only chemical agents employed; a bludgeon was the animal magnetism most in vogue, and your senses and your person were attacked and knocked down upon the open road without having the heels of either delicately tripped up by some one you did not see.

Still this difference was more apparent in the system of smuggling than in anything else, and the whole plan, particulars, course of action, and results were so completely opposed to anything that is, or can be in the present day--the scenes, the characters, the very localities have so totally changed, that it may be necessary to pause a moment before we go on to tell our tale, in order to give some sort of description of the state of the country bordering on the sea-coast, at the period to which I allude.

Scarcely any one of the maritime counties was in those days without its gang of smugglers; for if France was not opposite, Holland was not far off; and if brandy was not the object, nor silk, nor wine, yet tea and cinnamon, and hollands, and various East India goods, were things duly estimated by the British public, especially when they could be obtained without the payment of Custom-house dues. But besides the inducements to smuggling which the high price that those dues imposed upon certain articles, held out, it must be remembered that various other commodities were totally prohibited, and, as an inevitable consequence, were desired and sought for more than any others. The nature of both man and woman, from the time of Adam and Eve down to the present day, has always been fond of forbidden fruit; and it mattered not a pin whether the goods were really better or worse, so that they were prohibited, men would risk their necks to get them. The system of prevention also was very inefficient, and a few scattered Custom-House officers, aided by a cruiser here or there upon the coast, had an excellent opportunity of getting their throats cut or their heads broken, or of making a decent livelihood by conniving at the transactions they were sent down to stop, as the peculiar temperament of each individual might render such operations pleasant to him. Thus, to use one of the smugglers' own expressions--a roaring trade in contraband goods was going on along the whole British coast, with very little let or hindrance.

As there are land-sharks and water-sharks, so were there then (and so are there now) land-smugglers and water-smugglers. The latter brought the objects of their commerce, either from foreign countries or from foreign vessels, and landed them on the coast--and a bold, daring, reckless body of men they were; the former, in gangs, consisting frequently of many hundreds, generally well mounted and armed, conveyed the commodities so landed into the interior, and distributed them to others, who retailed them as occasion required. Nor were these gentry one whit less fearless, enterprising, and lawless than their brethren of the sea.

We have not yet done, however, with all the ramifications of this vast and magnificent league, for it extended itself, in the districts where it existed, to almost every class of society. Each tradesman smuggled or dealt in smuggled goods; each public house was supported by smugglers, and gave them in return every facility possible; each country gentleman on the coast dabbled a little in the interesting traffic; almost every magistrate shared in the proceeds or partook of the commodities. Scarcely a house but had its place of concealment, which would accommodate either kegs or bales, or human beings, as the case might be; and many streets in sea-port towns had private passages from one house to another, so that the gentleman inquired for by the officers at No. 1 was often walking quietly out of No. 20, while they were searching for him in vain. The back of one street had always excellent means of communication with the front of another; and the gardens gave exit to the country with as little delay as possible.

Of all counties, however, the most favoured by nature and by art for the very pleasant and exciting sport of smuggling, was the county of Kent; its geographical position, its local features, its variety of coast, all afforded it the greatest advantages; and the daring character of the natives on the shores of the Channel was sure to turn those advantages to the purposes in question. Sussex, indeed, was not without its share of facilities, nor did the Sussex men fail to improve them; but they were so much farther off from the opposite coast, that the commerce--which we may well call the regular trade--was, at Hastings, Rye, and Winchelsea, in no degree to be compared to that which was carried on from the North Foreland to Romney Hoy.

At one time, the fine level of "The Marsh," a dark night and a fair wind, afforded a delightful opportunity for landing a cargo and carrying it rapidly into the interior; at another time, Sandwich Flats and Pevensey Bay presented a harbour of refuge, and a place of repose to kegs innumerable and bales of great value; at another period, the cliffs round Folkestone and near the South Foreland, saw spirits travelling up by paths which seemed inaccessible to mortal foot; and at another, the wild and broken ground at the back of Sandgate was traversed by long trains of horses, escorting or carrying every description of contraband articles.

The interior of the country was not less favourable to the traffic than the coast: large masses of wood, numerous gentlemen's parks, hills and dales tossed about in wild confusion; roads such as nothing but horses could travel, or men on foot, often constructed with felled trees or broad stones laid side by side; wide tracts of ground, partly copse and partly moor, called in that county "minnisses;" and a long extent of the Weald of Kent, through which no high way existed, and where such thing as coach or carriage was never seen, offered the land smugglers opportunities of carrying on their transactions with the degree of secrecy and safety which no other county afforded. Their numbers, too, were so great, their boldness and violence so notorious, their powers of injuring or annoying so various, that even those who took no part in their operations were glad to connive at their proceedings, and at times to aid in concealing their persons