SMUGGLING

The offence of defrauding the revenue by the introduction of articles into consumption without pajine the duties chargeable upon them. It may be committed indifferently either upon the excise or customs revenue. Origin and Prevention of Smuggling. — This crime, which Occupies so prominent a place in the criminal legislation of all modern states, is wholly the result of vicious commercial and financial legislation. It is the fruit either of prohibitions of importation, or of oppre ively high duties. It does not originate in any depravity inherent in man; but in the folly and ignorance of legislators. A prohibition against importing a commodity does not take away the taste for it; and the imposition of a high duty on any article occasions a universal desire to escape or evade its payment. Hence ind occupation of the smuggler. The risk of being ■elected in the clandestine introduction of commodities under any system of fiscal regulations may always be valued at a certain average rate; and wherever the duties exceed mil rate, smuggling immediately takes place. Now, there are plainly but two ways of checking this practice, either the temptation to smuggle must be diminished by lowering the duties, or the difficulties in the way of smuggling must be increased. The first is obviously the more natoral ami efficient method of effecting the object in view; but the second has been most generally resorted to, even in i re the duties were quite exce ive. Governments have almost uniformly consulted the persons employed in i the revenue with respect to the best mode Of rendering taxes effectual; though it is clear that the Interests, prejudices, and peculiar habits of such persons, utter!} disqualify them from forming a sound opinion on such a subject. They cannot recommend a reduction of a means of repre ing smuggling and increasing revenue, without acknowledging their own incapacity to detect and defeat illicit practices; and the result has been, that instead <•( ascribing the prevalence of smuggling to its., the officers of customs and excise have almost Universally ascribed it to some defect in the laws, or in the mode of administering them, and have proposed repre ing it by new regulations, and by increasing the number and severity of the penalties affecting the smuggler. As might en expected, these attempts have, in the great majority of cases, proved signally unsucce ful. And it has been invariably found that no vigilance on the part of the revenue officers, and no severity of punishment, can prevent the smuggling of such commodities as are either prohibited or loaded with oppre ive duties. The smuggler is gemrally a popular character; and whatever the law may declare on the subject, it is quite ludicrous to expect thai the bulk of society will ever be brought to think that those who furnish them with cheap brandy, geneva, tobacco,Slc. are guilty of any very heinous offence. "To pretend," says Dr. Smith, "to have any scruple about buying smuggled goods, though a manifest encouragement to the violation of the revenue laws, and to the per- •ury which almost always attends it, would, in most countries,be regarded as one of those pedantic pieces of hypocrisy, which, instead of gaining credit with anybody, seems only to expose the person who affects to practise them to the suspicion of being a greater knave than most of his neighbours. By this indulgence of the public, the smuggler is often encouraged to continue a trade which he is thus taught to consider as in some measure innocent; and when the severity of the revenue laws is ready to fall upon him, he is frequently disposed to defend with violence what he has been accustomed to regard as his just property; and from being at first rather imprudent than criminal, he at last too often becomes one of the most determined violators of the laws of society." (Wealth of Nations, vol. iii., p. 491.) To create by means of high duties an overwhelming temptation to indulge in crime, and then to punish men for Indulging in it, is a proceeding completely subversive of every principle of justice. It revolts the natural feelings of the people; and teaches them to feel an interest in the worst characters — for such smugglers generally are — to espouse their cause, and avenge their wrongs. A punishment which is not proportioned to the offence, and which does not carry the sanction of public opinion along with it, can never be productive of any good effect. The true way to put down smuggling is to render it unprofitable, to diminish the temptation to engage in it; and this is not to be done by surrounding the coasts with cordons of troops, by the multiplication of oaths and penalties, and making the country the theatre of ferocious and bloody contests in the field, and of perjury and chicanery in the courts of law; but by repealing prohibitions, and reducing duties, so that their collection rosy be enforced with a moderate degree of vigilance, and that the forfeiture of the article may be a sufficent penalty upon the smuggler. It is in this, and in this only, that we must seek for an effectual check to illicit trafficking. Whenever the profits of the fair trader become nearly equal to [s. 1147]