there are instances
on record that this was actually done. Be that as it may, they had
great organizing skill and not a little business ability, whilst in
their combination of strategy and valour they were unsurpassed. In
many ways they were akin to pirates, though it could never be said
that they went outside their own particular business--_i.e._, they
were not predatory buccaneers who murdered first and plundered
afterwards. They believed, as I have said, their calling to be as
legitimate as any other form of trading. Their doctrine was that it
was the Government that acted illegally, and not themselves. It was
not surprising, therefore, that the system should take so long a time
to wipe out, notwithstanding the rigid way in which the whole
coastline of the British Isles was guarded. Much has been written
about the desperate ways of these men, but no accurate estimate can be
formed by the present generation of the extent of the system, and the
methods adopted to carry it on. Romance has gone far, but rarely too
far, in describing it; and to really know it as it was you must have
lived in its atmosphere, or have taken part, either for or against, in
its attractions. One of the greatest ambitions of my early boyhood
days comes to me now. I had resolved that when I grew up I would
secretly leave my home and join some smuggling lugger. Happily for me,
the luggers had disappeared before I grew up.

Here is an authentic instance of professional attachment and pride.
When I was quite a small boy a brig ran on to the rocks beneath my
father's house. The captain was a fine, rollicking, sailorly-looking
man, with a fascinating manner. He often came to our house during his
stay in the locality, and one of the first things he told my parents
was that in his younger days he was a smuggler, and had had many
encounters with Deal coastguards. He spoke sadly of the way the
"trade" was ruined by Government intervention, and said that he had
never been really settled or happy since he was driven out of the
business, and had to take service in the merchant navy for a living.
He was asked if he would like to go back to it again.

"Go back to it again!" said he; "I wish I could! There is nothing to
fill its place in the whole world. But that is done for now. Oh! what
good money we used to make, and what narrow squeaks we had of being
captured or killed."

It seems incredible that so great a change should have taken place in
so short a