of spirits--is that part of your fishing-tackle?"

_A._ "No, I was never convicted of no such thing."

_Q._ "I am not asking you that. You know what I mean. I ask whether it
is part of your profession."

_A._ "No, it was not."

_Q._ "You never do such things?"

_A._ "What should I do it for?"

_Q._ "I cannot tell you. I ask you whether you do it, not what you do
it for."

_A._ "I may choose to resolve whether I tell you or not."

_Q._ "I will not press you if your conscience is tender. You will not
tell me whether you do a little stroke in the Fair trade upon the
coast? You will not answer me that question?"

_A._ "I am telling the truth."

_Q._ "Will you answer that question?"

_A._ "No."

_Q._ "Are you or are you not frequently in practice as a smuggler?"

_A._ "No!"

And that was all that could be got out of a man who probably could
have told some of the best smuggling yarns in Cornwall. The
inhabitants so thoroughly loathed the Preventive men that, to quote
the words of the man who was chief officer there at the time we are
speaking of, "the hatred of the Cawsand smugglers is ... so great that
they scarcely ever omit an opportunity of showing it either by insult
or otherwise."

There was a kind of renaissance of smuggling about the third decade of
the nineteenth century, and this was brought on partly owing to the
fact that the vigilance along our coasts was not quite so smart as it
might have been. But there were plenty of men doing their duty to the
service, as may be seen from the account of Matthew Morrissey, a
boatman in the Coastguard Service at Littlehampton. About eleven
o'clock on the evening of April 5, 1833, he saw a vessel named the
_Nelson_, which had come into harbour that day. On boarding her,
together with another boatman, he found a crew of two men and a boy.
The skipper told him they were from Bognor in ballast. Morrissey went
below, got a light, and searched all over the after-cabin, the hold,
and even overhauled the ballast, but found nothing. He then got into
the Coastguard boat, took his boat-hook, and after feeling along the
vessel's bottom, discovered that it was not as it ought to have been.

"I'm not satisfied," remarked the Coastguard to her skipper, Henry
Roberts, "I shall haul you ashore."

One of the crew replied that he was "very welcome," and the Coastguard
then sent his companion ashore to fetch the chief boatman. The
Coastguard himself then again went aboard