r twenty years of almost complete supineness on the part of the
authorities, the first efforts made towards a systematic "Preventive"
coast service, composed of customs, excise and naval officials in
proportion varied according to the localities, remained singularly
futile. And to the notorious inability of these latter to cope with
the experience and the devilish daring of the old established free
traders, was due no doubt to the ferocity of the inquisitional laws
presently levelled against smuggling and smugglers--laws which
ruthlessly trenched upon almost every element of the British subjects'
vaunted personal freedom, and which added, for the time, several new
"hanging cases" to the sixty odd already in existence.

That part of the indictment against Captain Jack Smith and the other
criminals still at large, which dealt with their offences against the
smuggling act, would in later times have broken down infallibly from
want of proper evidence: not a tittle of information was forthcoming
which could support examination. But a judge of assizes and a jury in
1815, were not to be baulked of the necessary victim by mere
circumstantiality when certain offences against society and against
His Majesty had to be avenged; and the dispensers of justice were less
concerned with strict evidence than with the desirability of making
examples. Strong presumption was all that was required to them to hang
their man; and indeed the hanging of Captain Jack upon the other and
more serious counts than that of unlawful occupation, was, as has been
said, a foregone conclusion. The triple charge of murder being but too
fully corroborated.

Every specious argument that could be mooted was of course put forward
by counsel for the defence, to show that the death of the preventive
men and of Mr. Landale on Scarthey Island and the sinking of the
revenue cutter must be looked upon, on the one hand, as simple
manslaughter in self-defence, and as the result of accidental
collision, on the other. But, as every one anticipated, the charge of
the judge and the finding of the jury demanded strenuously the extreme
penalty of the law. Besides this the judge deemed it advisable to
introduce into the sentence one of those already obsolete penalties of
posthumous degradation, devised in coarser ages for the purpose of
making an awful impression upon the living.

"Prisoner at the bar," said his lordship at the conclusion of the last
day's proceedings, "th