• 1 See Maurice W. Beresford, “The Common Informer, the Penal Statutes and Economic Regulation”, The Ec (...)
• 2 See J. Bowden, The Wool Trade in Tudor and Stuart England, London, Macmillan, 1962.
• 3 See Ralph Davis, “The Rise of Protection in England, 1689-1786”, Economic History Review, 19, 1966, (...)
• 4 On tax policies and customs activity in the period see Elizabeth Hoon, The Organization of the Engl (...)

1Smuggling, that is the illegal importation or exportation of certain goods across the borders of a realm, is a highly circumstantial issue. According to the economic historian Maurice Beresford, it consists in “the shipping of the wrong goods to the wrong places at the wrong time of night from the wrong lading-points”.1 The essence of the crime is therefore, as Beresford suggests, a matter of time and place. This is not only true regarding certain places on the coast or certain times of the day, but it is also true in a wider historical sense: Exporting wool out of the kingdom of England at the beginning of the seventeenth century was not a crime as long as the customs duties were being paid. Yet it was a crime at the end of that century.2 Likewise, the importation of French wine was not a problem under normal circumstances, but it became a crime by the will of King and Parliament whenever England was at war with France.3 It is true, many people were willing to avoid the high and sometimes excessive duties on tea and tobacco no matter what the current policy was. But what one has to bear in mind is that much of what was considered criminal activity during certain periods of the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries was a rather normal and accepted form of commerce during other periods.4

• 5 See Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 2 Volumes, Oxford, (...)
• 6 See Arthur Lyon Cross (ed.), Eighteenth Century Documents Relating to the Royal Forests, the Sherif (...)
• 7 See Edward Vernon, Some Seasonable Advice from an Honest Sailor, to whom it might have Concerned, f (...)

2This observation already goes a long way in explaining why, during the eighteenth and nineteenth century, public opinion about smuggling and smugglers was, and to a certain extent still is, so controversial, to the degree that sympathy and contempt often co-existed. The Scottish philosopher Adam Smith for example, who was a Commissioner of Scottish Customs for some time later in life, famously remarked in his Wealth of Nations that the smuggler “is a person who, though no doubt blameable for violating the laws of his country, is frequently incapable of violating those of natural justice, and would have been in every respect an excellent citizen had not the laws of his country made that a crime which nature never meant to be so.”5 This rather sympathetic view was in stark contrast to the views of most of his colleagues at the Board of Customs in London, who tended to the view that smuggling not only affected the Nation’s wealth and the King’s personal revenue, but also the “publick peace of the Kingdom” because of its violence and its concomitant corruption of morality. Observers even feared that any sense “of the guilt in a Violation of the Laws” was lost in the light of the potential advantages that people derived from smuggling.6 But even this moral criminalization of smuggling pales against the opinions of people who believed that smuggling “has converted those employed in it, first from honest industrious fishermen, to lazy, drunken, and profligate Smugglers, and now, to dangerous Spies on all our Proceedings, for the Enemy’s daily Information.”7 In this view, and against the background of yet another French War, smugglers were brandished as traitors. Public opinion about smuggling, we may thus conclude, was as circumstantial as smuggling itself.

• 8 On the background see Nicholas Rogers, Mayhem: Post-War Crime and Violence in Britain, 1748-53, New (...)
• 9 See for instance André Krischer (ed.), Verräter. Geschichte eines Deutungsmusters, Köln-Weimar-Wien (...)

3This article is interested in these circumstances. It aims to trace the changing reputation of the smuggler in eighteenth-century Britain with a view to the political and social contexts in which these opinions were rooted. In doing so, it concentrates on the 1740s as a time of quickly changing circumstances and policies: The Jacobite uprising of 1745 and the War of the Austrian Succession contributed to an especially volatile political climate. So, too, did dramatic reports about the violence of armed gangs of smugglers on the English south coast.8 In analysing public perceptions of the social figure of the smuggler, the article places particular emphasis on the moments when circumstances changed in a way that made otherwise “excellent citizens” appear as rebels or even traitors to their country. The main argument is that calling someone a traitor may tell us more about those who used this particular language and their situation than about the people they subjected to that language. Studying the languages of rebellion and treason can thus, the article contends, be very useful heuristic keys for analysing deeper frictions within a given society. This argument follows recent research into the history of treason that is less interested in treason as a factual crime but rather in treason as a cultural phenomenon and a situational attribution dependent on the fortunes of the society in which it originates.9

• 10 On the economic discourse on smuggling see William Ashworth, Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, (...)

4Certainly the most obvious starting point is the typical government position on smuggling. On a general level, this did not change much over the course of the eighteenth century. Smuggling was seen as an economic crime, in that it defrauded the King of his revenues and in that it potentially impoverished the nation of England. If goods circumvented the customs officers in the ports, the King and the nation were cheated of taxes. And if raw wool was unlawfully exported from the shores of the kingdom, the national economy suffered from the competition of French and Dutch cloth that was of superior quality than the English, yet often depended on raw wool coming from England. In the context of mercantilist policies of economic protectionism in particular, the circumvention of tariff barriers was regarded as potentially the most detrimental of economic crimes.10

• 11 On the legal background of anti-smuggling policy see Frank McLynn, Crime and Punishment in Eighteen (...)
• 12 John Brewer, The Sinews of Power. War, Money, and the English State, 1688-1783, London, Routledge, (...)
• 13 See Graham Smith, King’s Cutters: The Revenue Service and the War against Smuggling, London, Conway (...)
• 14 Hannes Ziegler, “Competition in Coastal Water: Customs Sloops and Admiralty Cruisers in Eighteenth- (...)

5British policies therefore focused firmly on prevention. A long series of Acts of Parliament prohibited the im- and exportation of goods and mounted an increasing number of punitive measures on people that were willing to bypass the customs houses in the ports of the kingdom. From imprisonment under the harsh conditions of eighteenth-century goals, the impressment into the Navy for a certain number of years up to the transportation to the colonies, these punishments were directed at neutralising and correcting criminals.11 These legal measures were complemented by a growing apparatus of coastal police forces. While Customs houses in the major ports of the kingdom had existed for centuries, the strength and sophistication of the accounting procedures was gradually increased from the late seventeenth century onwards.12 Around the same time, special police forces were created on the shores of Great Britain. Hundreds of riding officers began patrolling the coastlines and to this was added the service of so-called customs cruisers surveilling the coastal waters.13 Army and Navy, too, were frequently called on to assist the customs men against the violent proceedings of the smuggling gangs.14

• 15 See The Report of the Committee appointed to inquire into the Frauds and Abuses in the Customs, to (...)
• 16 See Journal of the House of Commons (=JHC), vol. 25, 1745-1750 (London, 1803), p. 103.
• 17 The Report of the Committee appointed to inquire into the Frauds and Abuses in the Customs, 610; JH (...)
• 18 See “First Report”, 4, 8, 6, 5; “Second report from the committee, appointed to enquire into the il (...)

6The perception of smuggling as a fiscal threat was mirrored in the language with which it was discussed at a central level. Most frequently, this language alternated between individual condemnations of the smugglers as rogues and criminals and more general lamentations about the detrimental consequences for Great Britain. In the latter category, frequent reports decried the “Greatness of the Loss to the Revenue” or the “Destruction of the Revenue” resulting from smuggling.15 A surveyor of customs in Wales, for example, concluded a report in 1745 with a statement that was very much in line with the opinions of many of his colleagues, namely “that the Smugglers will one time or other, if not prevented, be the Ruin of this Kingdom.”16 Regarding the smugglers directly, moreover, what they engaged in was commonly denounced as either “infamous” or “pernicious” practices by government figures, administrators and observers alike.17 Next to bidding “defiance to the Revenue Officers”, the organised manner in which these crimes were committed “under the open Guard and Protection of armed Troops of Men” rendered the officers “quiet Spectators of the Proceedings” and justified calling this manner of smuggling an “open and avowed Profession”, a “mixed system of War and Trade” and a “System of Force”.18

• 19 See JHC 25, 109.
• 20 See 9 George II, c.35; TNA CUST148/12, 617.

7This understanding of the smuggler as a rogue and criminal, however, was only to a certain degree about the smugglers as such. If we look beneath this public discourse, the crux of the matter was something else. By the mid-1740s smuggling had become so widespread that Parliament set up a committee to investigate its causes and to propose solutions. The committee invited a large number of people to testify publicly about the practice of smuggling. Among these were many experts, that is merchants and tradesmen that had been part of smuggling operations in previous years and even a few confessed smugglers. While almost all of them testified that police forces on the coast of England were too weak to prevent smuggling effectively, the real problem, as they saw it, was that the incentives were simply too high. If duties on tea and tobacco remained as high as they currently were, one really could not blame people living on the coast for engaging in illegal activities. “If the Smuggler finds it his Interest to smuggle,” one merchant thought, “he will do it.”19 The committee was indeed sympathetic to this view. In what is perhaps a classic case of premodern political economy, the committee essentially weighed two options against each other: Parliament could either lower the duties and thereby also diminish the incentives for smuggling, or it could significantly raise the stakes for smugglers by introducing stricter legislation and severer punishments. Interestingly, the committee was wise enough to foresee that stricter legislation would not solve the problem entirely, as it would potentially criminalise more and more people. The most certain measure, therefore, to prevent smuggling in the future, so the general conclusion ran, was to lower the duties on highly taxed goods such as tea and tobacco and to issue a general pardon for those that had participated in running contraband in the past, essentially inviting minor criminals back into the foil.20

• 21 See Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. 2 Volumes, Oxford, (...)
• 22 See Kirk Willis, “The Role in Parliament of the Economic Ideas of Adam Smith, 1776-1800”, History o (...)

8In a sense, these considerations anticipated Smith’s later thoughts on smuggling in the Wealth of Nations. Both the realistic reflection on the inclinations of human nature, as well as the realisation that severer punishments and stricter administrative measures were only a second best option next to a more liberal economic policy, was already partly formulated in the 1746 parliamentary hearing.21 Perhaps unfortunately, these thoughts did not carry the day. The Customs revenue was then – in the general context of expensive European and colonial warfare – regarded as too important to potentially diminish it by lowering the tariffs. Only in the 1780s, with William Pitt’s Commutation Act of 1784, did this sentiment translate briefly into general policy.22

• 23 JHC 25, 104.

10Whereas Parliament was thus occasionally inclined to the view that smugglers were perhaps not entirely to blame for committing revenue crimes, the general opinion of the inhabitants of coastal regions often was that smuggling was not a crime at all. Some of the witnesses that were called before the parliamentary committee were quite clear about this. They thought that the effective policing of the coastal regions was so difficult, not only because police forces were so weak, but because the inhabitants of the coast were frequently helping smugglers in bypassing the customs officers. “The Smugglers,” on witness said, “most commonly escape the Custom-house Sloops, by means of Intelligence sent from the Inhabitants of the Coast, when those Sloops sail out of Port; and that the generality of the People on the Coast are better Friends to the Smugglers than to the Customs-house Officers”.23 In fact, popular attitudes towards smuggling in early modern England were generally characterised by sympathy and a number of historians have argued that smuggling actually constituted a socially accepted crime.

• 24 See for instance J.A  Sharpe, Crime in Early Modern England 1550-1750, London, Longman Pub Group, 1 (...)

11Going back to an essentially Marxist interpretation of social history, the idea of “social crime” dates back to the 1970s and was first developed for the English context by scholars like Eric Hobsbawn and Edward Thompson. Crime, in this interpretation, must be regarded social when it represents a conscious challenge to the prevailing social and political order. It occurs when there exist conflicting sets of official and unofficial interpretations of the legal system, when acts of law-breaking contain elements of social protest, or when such acts are firmly connected to the development of social and political unrest.24 Poaching, for example, therefore is a classic case of social crime, and so is the custom of gathering firewood, certain forms of riots, and smuggling. This outlook on crimes committed by the lower strata of society has, from the beginning, been heavily criticised regarding its supposedly revolutionary nature and the revolutionary intention of the people involved. A more nuanced reformulation of social crime, and one that is more widely accepted by scholars, is that even in the absence of such revolutionary intentions, some forms of economic crime were widely accepted socially, especially on a local level.

• 25 See for instance Alexandre Dupont, “Des royalistes aux frontières. Une menace politique transnation (...)
• 26 Old Bailey Proceedings Online, Ordinary of Newgate’s Account, OA17470729 (29 July 1747); OA17480318 (...)
• 27 Old Bailey Proceedings Online, Ordinary of Newgate’s Account, OA17471116 (16 November 1747).
• 28 Old Bailey Proceedings Online, Ordinary of Newgate’s Account, OA17511023 (23 October 1751).
• 29 Old Bailey Proceedings Online, Ordinary of Newgate’s Account, OA17511023 (23 October 1751).
• 30 Old Bailey Proceedings Online, t17760911-42 (Trial of Robert Harley and Edward George, September 17 (...)
• 31 The National Archives, Kew (henceforth: TNA) T1/185, no.63.
• 32 Old Bailey Proceedings Online, t18000528-6 (Trial of William Strick, May 1800).

12Evidence of the coastal regions supports this interpretation to a certain extent. While, on the whole, there is no decisive evidence that inhabitants of the coast pursued smuggling in a conscious political challenge to authority, it is clear that smuggling was an accepted practice among many of these inhabitants. Even if they did not engage actively in smuggling, local people did frequently help smugglers and just as frequently regarded customs officers as the real enemy. Smugglers, in this view, were no criminals, but rather honest thieves.25 Some of those apprehended for running contraband had, according to their own testimony, “not the least Notion” of any law against smuggling; others were similarly “ignorant” of what the legal consequences might entail and entirely unaware hat they “had done any thing amiss by following the bad Practices of Smuggling”.26 This chimes with the notion that smuggling was such a common occupation that many found little blame in it. In the eyes of many, it was “so common a Practice, and a Thing so publickly done”.27 One offender even proclaimed that smuggling was “the general Practice of his Neighbours” and so he “ventured among them, and got Money by it, as his Neighbours did.”28 According to these testimonies, smuggling was a common occupation like any other: “It was so commonly practiced all over the Country, that he looked upon the bare Act of Smuggling as a Calling, which a Man might exercise himself in without Danger of Life, as well as any other Business”.29 As well as an ordinary occupation, moreover, many clearly considered smuggling their business and reacted with consternation when disrupted, accusing Customs men of trying to “rob a man of his property”.30 Across the whole of Scotland, it was reported that local people treated the officers “as if they were Thieves”.31 As the smugglers considered the goods their property, and as “they had ventured their lives for them already”, they would “rather lose their lives before they would lose their goods.”32

• 33 Old Bailey Proceedings Online, Ordinary of Newgate’s Account, OA17470729 (29 July 1747). More conte (...)
• 34 West Sussex Record Office, Goodwood 155, H96.

13Perhaps surprisingly, this form of sympathy towards smuggling was also widespread among the general population and even among customs officers themselves. The Ordinary of Newgate once lamented, in 1747, that the smugglers believed that the crime for which they were condemned “was not so heinous in the Sight of God, as the Punishment was severe by the Laws of Men”. It was, moreover, not only these “unhappy Criminals” who believed this, “but many well-meaning though unthinking Men labour under this fatal Mistake.” It appeared that, “the common People of England in general fancy that there is nothing in it.” They believed what the smugglers gained “by their Dexterity” was an “honest Gain, to be enjoyed as the Fruits of their Industry and Labour”.33 Even the 2nd Duke of Richmond – perhaps the most vengeful enemy of smuggling in the eighteenth century – was aware that it was a “great truth” that “the common people of this country have no notion that smugling is a crime”.34

• 35 See John Brewer, “Servants of the Public –Servants of the Crown: Officialdom of Eighteenth-Century (...)
• 36 East Sussex Record Office, SAY2251. The entire exchange comprises letters SAY2243-2268. Evidence on (...)

14To some extent, this understanding also affected the Customs ranks. Given that the lower ranks of the service were drawn from the communities in which they served, this may not come as a big surprise.35 Surprising, however, is the widespread nature of such sentiments. Even if we seldom find a Customs man proudly expressing the view that smuggling ought not to be treated as illegal, it is telling to look at how Customs men spoke about apprehended offenders. In surprisingly many cases, the attitude was compassion. Occasionally, Customs men even supported the smugglers’ pleas for mercy when caught. Thomas Holman, for instance, a professed smuggler who was – in the course of the trials against the Hawkhurst Gang in the 1740s – accused of having helped some of the smugglers escape across the Channel, was assisted by John Collier, a superior Customs official in Sussex. Collier, despite knowing the shortcomings of Holman’s person, did his best for the “poor unfortunate Person” and was able to obtain mercy after a long petitioning campaign.36

• 37 On the patters of coastal economies and their social impact see for instance Christophe Cérino, Ali (...)
• 38 See for instance TNA T1/61, no.2; T1/72, no.43; T1/80, no.125; T1/93, no.86; T1/97, no.100; T1/189, (...)
• 39 TNA CUST97/20, 10 June 1772.
• 40 TNA CUST97/8, 24 June 1734; CUST97/9, 13 August 1735.

15This popular understanding of the smuggler as an honest thief was, however, only to a certain degree about the smugglers as such. If we look beneath this discourse, the crux of the matter was something else. The most important forms of subsistence for inhabitants of the coast was trade and fishing. Fishing, however, often was a part-time occupation rigidly limited by the turning of the seasons. Additionally, it depended on luck and skill as much as on the benevolence of the sea. Trade, on the other hand, was an elite phenomenon in coastal communities. When wages were low for unskilled labourers and work was scarce even for the skilled fishermen, smuggling provided an alternate form of subsistence. Far from providing rich communities with illegal income, as some claimed, smuggling often was the only option for inhabitants of poor coastal communities.37 We can see this from petitions of customs officers to the authorities. Sometimes, when they had successfully apprehended smugglers, they asked central authorities to show mercy and “compassion” rather than insist on the strict execution of the laws. In their letters, smugglers turned out to be young men who were forced into the practice of smuggling by economic pressures rather than criminal intentions, often finding no other means of subsistence in their community.38 A report from Norfolk’s Winterton-on-Sea, from 1772, paints a vivid picture of the economic pressures in these small coastal communities: The local men were devoid of “comfortable subsistance”, finding employment in the fisheries only five months each year, making them “destitute of any employment” for the rest of the time and ultimately rendering them “extremely poor”.39 To aid in smuggling, even if indirectly, provided an alternative form of subsistence for many such communities and makes the wider community’s support for such activity entirely plausible. Aiding the smugglers, it is clear, frequently resulted in rewards and favourable deals for local people.40 Thus, popular opinion about smugglers as “honest thiefs” was really the surface of a deeper social issue centred on the question of poverty and subsistence in poor coastal communities.

• 41 See Nicholas Rogers, Mayhem: Post-War Crime and Violence in Britain, 1748-1753, New Haven-London, Y (...)
• 42 See for instance TNA CUST148/12, f.577-622; The Report of the Committee appointed to inquire into t (...)

16These official and popular attitudes towards smuggling were each relatively constant throughout the 18th century. The 1740s, however, saw such a drastic increase in smuggling that it began not only to be perceived as an economic issue, but rather as a challenge to authority. With the Austrian Succession dividing Europe, British authorities focused resources on the war effort. The war also meant a crackdown on trade and fishing on the southern coastlines. And while prices for bread were steadily on the rise, the infamous and brutal press gangs of the Navy began roaming the coastal communities for able-bodied men to be impressed into Navy service.41 The smuggling communities quickly adapted to these pressures. Smuggling vessels became bigger and equipped with heavier arms. Moreover, as smuggling operations became both more dangerous and desperate, smugglers often chose to go armed and in large groups for their protection. Consequently, clashes between the army and armed smugglers increased. Soldiers and customs officers were frequently wounded and even killed and the countryside in some counties abounded with large gangs of armed smugglers, sometimes more than a hundred strong.42

• 43 JHC 25, 102.
• 44 See in particular the pamphlet Anon. [“Gentleman of Chichester”], A Full and Genuine History of the (...)

17The simultaneous parliamentary debates on smuggling must be seen in this light. The parliamentary committee of 1746, for instance, heard evidence that smugglers were in fact operating in such large gangs now, that officers did not even dare to approach them, because when they did, they would be beaten and, not infrequently, killed.43 The 1740s also saw several spectacularly brutal cases of violence by smugglers. One case centred on the infamous Hawkhurst gang, a large and well-organised group of smugglers operating from Hawkhurst in Kent. The case attracted attention not only because this gang roamed the countryside in large numbers of heavily armed men, sometimes a few hundred strong, but especially because they had killed two innocent informers, one of them even a customs officer and a Royal servant. Accordingly, the news of their crimes sparked particular outrage in London and especially among the landed gentry of southern England.44

• 45 Anon., Advice to the Unwary, 4.
• 46 Stephen Janssen, Smuggling Laid Open, in all its Extensive and Destructive Branches, London, W. Owe (...)
• 47 “First Report”, 6.
• 48 Glasgow City Archives, CE60/1/3, 12 September 1764.
• 49 TNA T1/361, no.21.
• 50 “First Report”, 25.
• 51 Eighteenth Century Documents, 239, 308.
• 52 Eighteenth Century Documents, 290.
• 53 TNA CUST148/12, f.681.

18This heightened perception of smuggling as a political threat was also reflected in the language applied to the practice. Smuggling, according to various observers of the time, amounted to “a sort of open rebellion highly inconsistent with, and greatly reproachful, to civil government”.45 It was, in fact, seen as “opposite to all Principles of Government”.46 Because it was carried on with “the most open and daring Violence”, and because both the exertions of the Customs officers and the soldiers sent to their assistance regularly proved futile, government concluded that “Enormities of such Violence and Extent amount to a partial State of Anarchy and rebellion; and have a tendency to weaken and impair every Idea of a regular Government, and all due Submission to the Laws of the Land.”47 In some cases, this attitude was paired with a quintessential English arrogance vis-à-vis other and supposedly less civilised parts of Britain. It was no surprise to the Edinburgh Board of Customs, for instance, that the laws were so difficult to impose on the isle of Arran, for the people there “speake none of our Language”.48 Similarly, the Irish west coast, it was alleged, was inhabited by people still “unreduced and uncivilized”.49 Smuggling, in those parts as well as in the coastal counties of England, was corrupting the “morals of the People, and an Interruption of all good Government.”50 It was a danger to “publick Safety” and it was “subversive both of Law and Government”.51 Ultimately, central observers argued, the practice “calls aloud for the Interposition of Government”.52 Moreover, as one Customs official contended in 1744, if the smugglers “cannot be broke, shutt up Westminster Hall, and disband all your officers of Justice as an expensive but useless incumbrance on the Nation.”53 This language, then, was clearly of a new quality. To call smuggling and its consequences a “partial State of Anarchy and Rebellion” indicated a shift in the political connotations of smuggling: Just as smuggling had thus metamorphosed from a primarily economic crime to a form of civil unrest, moreover, the smuggler had moved from being a criminal to being accused as a rebel.

• 54 JHC 25, 103.
• 55 Eighteenth Century Documents, 290.

19Once again, however, this understanding of the smuggler as an anarchist or rebel was only to a certain degree about the smuggler as such. Rather, it was a discourse on state authority in a much broader sense. One of the witnesses in the parliamentary hearing reported that smugglers were not only moving contraband, but also intimidating civil magistrates in such a violent way, that little law enforcement was actually done. “And the witness”, the hearing records, “attributes it to this Terror”.54 Indeed, smuggling practiced in the abovementioned way actually posed two problems that were of particular concern to early modern British governments. Firstly, it posed a very real threat to what contemporaries called “the police of the kingdom”.55 Not only was enforcement of the laws hindered in a much wider sense than the enforcement of the customs tariffs, but the presence of large gangs of armed smugglers also questioned state authority on a very basic level. If government was unable to prevent this, where exactly was its authority? The second concern was more focused on the issue of morality. As one commenter remarked:

• 57 See for instance John Wesley, A Word to a Smuggler, London, [publisher not identified], 1783.
• 58 Old Bailey Proceedings Online, t17480115-28 (Trial of Samuel Chilvers and Robert Scott, January 174 (...)
• 59 Old Bailey Proceedings Online, Ordinary of Newgate’s Account, OA17470729 (29 July 1747).

20In such interpretation, the smuggler was a base creature, engaged in an immoral sin that actively and progressively corrupted the soul.57 As smuggling, moreover, bred “contempt” for the King and the law and as it threatened the “common Peace of the Kingdom”, it was a “Terror of the Public” and a “Terror of the Subject” and ultimately a “kind of rebellion”.58 It was, in short, “a Sin of deep Dye”, entirely deserving of the “Resentment of every Man, who pretends to any Share of moral Honesty”.59

• 60 See on piracy for instance Lauren Benton, A Search for Sovereignty. Law and Geography in European E (...)

21In this type of extreme language during what constituted a domestic crisis occasioned by the war, the smugglers were vilified as the enemies of economic prosperity, enemies of the public peace, and enemies of any sense of due morality, righteous lawfulness, and orderly government. In this type of discourse, the social figure of the smuggler gained similar characteristics as the social figure of the pirate.60 As the pirate, the smuggler was understood to act beyond these laws, beyond the nation, beyond decency, and sometimes even beyond humanity. In the 1740s, then, and in times of war, smuggling was regarded as a disturbing form of civil unrest and the smuggler as a particularly dangerous type of rebel. Rather than being about smuggling as such, this was, at its heart, a political debate about the enforcement of state authority in times of war.

• 61 TNA CUST59/73, 14 December 1745; CUST97/75, 14 December 1745.
• 62 Vernon, Seasonable Advice, 109.
• 63 Vernon, Seasonable Advice, 19.
• 64 Richard Saville (ed.), The Letters of John Collier of Hastings 1731-1746, Lewes, Sussex Record Soci (...)
• 65 Vernon, Seasonable Advice, 110.

23The most open advocate of this view during the 1740s was Admiral Edward Vernon. He was a distinguished and experienced officer of the Royal Navy and commander of the North Sea Fleet in the 1740s, where he commanded a squadron of war ships in the Channel and on the east coast. His brief was to watch against French naval operations in the Channel, with a particular emphasis on potential French invasions. After being dismissed form service in 1746, he wrote several pamphlets about his service and was particularly outraged by the smugglers. To some extent, this was also an attack on the Customs service. He openly complained that the Customs cruisers suffered the smugglers to escape when their vessels were seized, thereby enabling them to carry on a traitorous correspondence with the French.61 What especially bewildered him was that these people provided the French with goods that were desperately needed by the English. These smugglers were “such Traitors to their Country” that they carried on doing this even in times of war. His second concern was that these smugglers worked as “daily Spies, to give the Enemy Intelligence of all our Proceedings”.62 In fact he claimed to know that the governors of the French ports asked the masters of the smuggling vessels to give evidence of all they knew about the British war effort, “and for this Act of Treachery [they got] the Licence to carry on this profligate commerce.”63 It seems indeed as if Vernon’s contacts among Dutch agents had provided him with credible evidence of British smugglers betraying British positions to the enemy and offering the French their service as pilots and navigators for a potential invasion of Britain.64 The very practice of smuggling, therefore, had, Vernon argued, “converted those employed in it, first from honest industrious fishermen, to lazy, drunken, and profligate Smugglers, and now, to dangerous Spies on all our Proceedings, for the Enemy’s daily Information.”65

• 66 Stephen Janssen, Smuggling Laid Open, in all its Extensive and Destructive Branches, London, W. Owe (...)
• 67 Anon., Advice to the Unwary, 6.
• 68 JHC 25, 102, 105.
• 69 See Paul Monod, “Dangerous Merchandise: Smuggling, Jacobitism, and Commercial Culture in Southeast (...)

24One can ask whether this was a typical view at the time. In fact, the apparent savagery of Vernon’s attacks on treasonous smugglers are an outlier in the general discourse of the period. To some extent, however, other government figures shared this concern. Similar to other episodes of war with the French, smuggling during the 1740s was depicted in the darkest of colours, “pregnant with Evils” and of “fatal Consequences”.66 Smugglers, it was believed, “serve as spies and intelligence carriers to their [=the French] fleets and armies, when, where, and how to strike the fatal blow”.67 The parliamentary committee inquiring into smuggling in 1745 in fact received credible reports that smugglers reported movements of the British fleet to the French.68 Smugglers, and in particular those trading with enemy ports, therefore operated under a general suspicion of treason. This impression gained from the 1740s is validated by a look at similar constellations throughout the century. During the Spanish Succession War, at around the 1715 Jacobite crisis, and again during the Napoleonic Wars, smugglers quickly and regularly acquired the suspicion of treasonous activity. The sentiment was so established that Napoleon felt inclined to use it as a particularly stinging taunt against the British, claiming to reap the greatest of benefits from the British government’s very own subjects, namely those employed in the illicit trade.69

• 70 Richard Saville (ed.), The Letters of John Collier of Hastings 1731-1746, Lewes, Sussex Record Soci (...)
• 71 Richard Saville (ed.), The Letters of John Collier of Hastings 1731-1746, Lewes, Sussex Record Soci (...)

25And yet, once again, this discourse about the smugglers as traitors to their country in times of war is a somewhat incomplete picture, especially for the 1740s and the prominent figure of Vernon. At closer inspection, the crucial element lies somewhere else. During his service commanding the eastern squadron, Admiral Vernon was extremely dissatisfied with his station. He regularly asked Whitehall for more men and more ships, but was regularly turned down by the Navy Office. At the same time, the Customs Office carried on employing large numbers of men on the coast and in the coastal waters. Vernon clearly perceived this as a personal insult. As smuggling was still practiced to a large extent, the efficiency of the Customs seemed completely futile and the men and ships provided for this service seemed altogether wasted. While he was denied more men, the customs officers wasted resources on a large scale and yet to no avail. At his own estimate, south-coast ports such as Deal, Dover, Ramsgate and Folkstone had ample potential for more men to be drafted into the Navy, who instead engaged in smuggling.70 In his scathing attacks on this situation, he did not stop short of accusing individual officers of the customs of aiding and abetting the smugglers. Such was the fate, for instance, of John Collier, supervisor of the coastal police forces in Kent, whom Vernon accused of negligence and misconduct in the fight against smuggling. Collier bitterly complained about this, but also mounted a hearty defence, arguing that in obtaining strategic intelligence about the French to the British government, he had indeed made use of the occasional fisherman and sailor reputed to be concerned in smuggling. He had, however, made sure that the criminal deeds of these men were a thing of past. In fact, Collier openly advocated making good use of the intimate knowledge that these men had of the French coast. Collier, in other words, did not follow Vernon’s easy equation of smuggling with treason. “The man’s character”, he tellingly wrote to Vernon about one of these individuals, “is not impeached but only in the infamous practice of smugling”.71

• 72 See Ayşe Çelikkol, Romances of Free Trade. British Literature, Laissez-Faire, and the Global Ninete (...)

27The smuggler in eighteenth-century Britain had many names and was called many things. Yet whether he was portrayed as a criminal or as an honest thief, as a rebel or a traitor, he was not merely talked about for his own sake, but as evidence and indicator of something else. Sometimes the real issue was less convenient to openly address, for political or other reasons. At other times, the underlying problem operated on the level of social and economic pressures rather than in the realm of the political. The figure of the smuggler, therefore, was a convenient projection screen for such matters, because it connected with many issues, economic, social, and political. Ultimately, the social figure of the smuggler commands an important position in eighteenth-century discourses about social policies and the situation of the poor, about the enforcement of state authority and the necessities of war. While his real impact on all these issues was perhaps far less important than these discourses suggest, the image of the smuggler became an important discursive device and rhetorical figure in political debates of eighteenth-century Britain. This crucial discursive position of the smuggler is not confined to the 1740s, moreover. One could easily find examples for the entire eighteenth century, and beyond. In this spirit, Ayşe Çelikkol has similarly located the smuggler at the heart of a political and cultural debate about the ambivalence of free trade in early nineteenth-century Britain. Seen against the background of the above evidence, it should not come as a surprise that in the literary discourse of the time, perhaps most prominently in Walter Scott’s writings, smuggling, too, was regarded as an “act of betrayal” situated at the crossroads of an “irreconcilability of patriotism and free trade”. In this reasoning, the smuggler’s “lack of a homeland” and “the loss of a distinction between the foreign and the domestic” even seem to make him a “prototypical postnational subject”.72