ariff of custom-house
corruption is arranged with more uniform regularity, and far more
perfectly understood, than the tariff of customs' duties--the difference
being, that the customs' revenues may not be paid, but the customs'
officers must." The due amount of fee being insinuated into the "itching
palm" of the revenue officers, your goods pass with all imaginable
facility. By the magic of a four, eight, or sixteen dollar bit, as the
case may be, a mist settles over the vision of the complaisant official,
and either prevents his seeing at all, or else transforms in the most
remarkable manner the objects that pass before him. Bales of manufactured
goods assume the appearance of sacks of potatoes and onions--nay, those
useful products of the soil are sometimes even supposed to be contained in
wooden cases and casks, carefully hooped and nailed; "and huge canvass
bales are likewise cleared, and reported to be indubitably filled with the
said potatoes, the softness of the packages to the touch arising probably
from the fact of their being boiled!"

At times, however, by a rare chance, an incorruptible custom-house is
discovered; and for that, or some other reason, it is deemed advisable to
resort to the old, and certainly more sporting plan, of running the
cargoes, which is accomplished in a most systematic and comfortable
manner. The smugglers are usually in sufficient number to deter the
carabineros from meddling; and if, by chance, the latter _should_
interfere, they almost invariably receive a sound thrashing. There are a
large number of small Portuguese craft constantly employed in running
contraband goods; and the quantity of merchandise introduced from
Gibraltar is enormous. The latter town, which, by the census of 1835, had
15,000 inhabitants, contains _only_ 3000 cigar manufacturers. As our
author says, what a frightful deal they must smoke in Gibraltar!

It is all nonsense talking in mincing terms about English smuggling in
Spain. However much our Government might discountenance it, nothing could
be done to prevent it, not even if English guarda costas were stationed
round the whole eleven hundred miles of Spanish coast. The smuggled goods
would then go through Portugal, as many of them do now; or any diminution
in the amount of English merchandise imported, would be made up by a
corresponding increase in the quantity of French. Why, even the Germans,
the respectable, plodding Germans, supply their quota of indi