SMUGGLING.

A PEOPLE may be so immoral or short-sighted that government shall find it almost impracticable effectually to patronise them, or to act with enlightened humanity towards them. Thus, the British government, desiring to give profitable employment to the silk trade of Britain, prohibited the importation of French silks. The effect was, that many wealthy or enterprising persons engaged in that branch of business, and gave bread to a numerous body of workmen. But other persons refused to allow this state of things to continue. They became what are called smugglers. They imported secretly, and against the law, French silks, which were cheaper and more gaudy than the British. Thus the smugglers injured the British manufacturers, depriving them of sales, and consequently of bread. So far as in their power, the

smugglers defeated the beneficent purposes of the British legislature. Government placed a guard along the coast of England, but the smugglers eluded the guard. They had spies on shore to assist their enterprises; and when detected they fought the guard, and slaughter ensued.

Where then were the clergy of England? It is to little purpose that the Christian minister reads from the pulpit vague essays in praise of good morals, the beauty of virtue, the deformity of vice, and so forth, while he fails to unfold the whole counsel of God, by pointing out and denouncing special offences when they occur. Christianity arms its ministers with powerful weapons. They are authorized to announce to men of bad lives the fearful doom," Depart from me ye cursed." Where were the dissenters or the missionaries who go about pretending to diffuse the doctrines of the gospel? They talk in vain about redemption, and free grace, and sin, if they fail to enforce the terrors of the divine law, against actual, and specific, and known crimes, and do not tell their hearers that there is neither redemption, nor grace, nor hope, for the unsanctified, that is for him who disregards the

plain precept of the Christian Lawgiver, To do unto others even as ye would that they should do unto you. On the occasion in question, why did not every pulpit near the coast, denounce the profligate proceedings of these inhuman and traitorous smugglers, who were systematically employed in bestowing their labour and hazarding their lives in committing the most cruel injuries against their countrymen-persons and families of the same station with themselves.

Instead of striking at the root of the evil, by instructing the people in the true nature of the offence, the matter was treated as a question of mere pence, or profit, or what is fashionably called -political economy. The writers and speakers on the subject treated this kind of smuggling not as a serious crime or offence against morality, but as a sort of venial offence, like the shooting of a partridge by a poacher, which may always be expected to exist to some extent. Government, unsupported by the moral and religious officers of the nation, found no other remedy than to try to beat the smugglers, by admitting French silks under a considerable tax or duty,-a measure which still

affords profit to the smuggler, and which has ultimately proved pernicious to the British manufacturer.

The first step ought to have been to call upon the clergy to do their duty. The second to call upon the manufacturers to send monthly detachments of their operatives to assist the preventive guard. These detachments (changed monthly to prevent collusion or seduction) would not merely have acted with severity towards the smugglers ; but they would, in conversation, have placed the question on its true footing, that of a warfare between British and foreign manufacturers. They would have shewn that the smugglers were the emissaries of the foreigners-traitors to their country-the enemies of the British poor, and en

titled therefore to no countenance or mercy.

The mob regard with much indifference, the execution of a criminal for the robbery of a rich man. Their sympathy is apt to pass rather to the side of the malefactor. But let the crime be clearly seen to touch themselves, or those of their own station, and they feel very differently. At the execution of the sentence of death upon Burke, the mob of

Edinburgh not only looked on with satisfaction, but exulted with savage fury over the wretched criminal, whose atrocities were of a nature to be directed against the poor exclusively. It was found difficult to send his associate Hare, the King's evidence, in safety out of the country.

When the smuggler merely attempts to accommodate his neighbours or equals with cheap whisky, they infallibly forgive, in ordinary times, what appears to them a very venial offence. But shew them that he is ministering to the luxury or vanity of the rich, by importing articles that might be prepared at home, thereby acting to the prejudice of British workmen, and all sympathy with the smuggler will be instantly extinguished. He will be treated as an outlaw, to be informed against, and hunted down. Governments always rely too much on exertions of authority or power, and too little on the arts of persuasion. When government is in the right, and seriously endeavours to convince the understandings of the public, it never fails to prove successful. But if government was, in the case under consideration, not sufficiently clearsighted, that affords no defence for the clergy, who