stoms official or
a smuggler[5325]. The more excessive the tax the higher the premium
offered to the violators of the law; at every place on the boundaries of
Brittany with Normandy, Maine and Anjou, four pence per pound added
to the salt-tax multiplies beyond any conception the already enormous
number of contraband dealers. "Numerous bands of men,[5326] armed with
frettes, or long sticks pointed with iron, and often with pistols or
guns, attempt to force a passage. "A multitude of women and of children,
quite young, cross the brigades boundaries or, on the other side, troops
of dogs are brought there, kept closed up for a certain time without
food or drink, then loaded with salt and now turned loose so that
they, driven by hunger, immediately bring their cargo back to their
masters."--Vagabonds, outlaws, the famished, sniff this lucrative
occupation from afar and run to it like so many packs of hounds. "The
outskirts of Brittany are filled with a population of emigrants, mostly
outcast from their own districts, who, after a year's registered stay,
may enjoy the privileges of the Bretons: their occupation is limited to
collecting piles of salt to re-sell to the contraband dealers." We might
imagine them, as in a flash of lightening, as a long line of restless
nomads, nocturnal and pursued, an entire tribe, male and female, of
unsociable prowlers, familiar with to underhand tricks, toughened by
hard weather, ragged, "nearly all infected by persistent scabies," and I
find similar bodies in the vicinity of Morlaix, Lorient, and other ports
on the frontiers of other provinces and on the frontiers of the kingdom.
From 1783 to 1787, in Quercy, two allied bands of smugglers, sixty and
eighty each, defraud the revenue of 40,000 of tobacco, kill two customs
officers, and, with their guns, defend their stores in the mountains; to
suppress them soldiers are needed, which their military commander
will not furnish. In 1789,[5327] a large troop of smugglers carry on
operations permanently on the frontiers of Maine and Anjou; the military
commander writes that "their chief is an intelligent and formidable
bandit, who already has under him fifty-five men, he will, due to misery
and rebellion soon have a corps;" it would, as we are unable to take him
by force, be best, if some of his men could be turned and made to
hand him over to us. These are the means resorted to in regions where
brigandage is endemic.--Here, indeed, as in Calabria, t