troubled with much spare cash. She has plenty of men, and fine men
they are; all dressed in red flannel shirts and blue trousers; some of
them have not taken off their canvas or tarpaulin petticoats, which
are very useful to them, as they are in the boats night and day, and
in all weathers. But we will at once go down into the cabin, where we
shall find the lieutenant who commands her, a master's mate, and a
midshipman. They have each their tumbler before them, and are drinking
gin-toddy, hot, with sugar--capital gin, too, 'bove proof; it is from
that small anker standing under the table. It was one that they forgot
to return to the Custom House when they made their last seizure."

In 1786, by the 26 Geo. III. c. 40, section 27, it was made lawful for
any commander of any of his Majesty's vessels of war, or any officer
by them authorised, to make seizures without a deputation or
commission from the Commissioners of the Customs. Those were curious
times when we recollect that apart altogether from the men-of-war of
varying kinds, there were large numbers of armed smuggler-cutters,
Custom-House cutters with letters of marque, privateers, and even
Algerine corsairs from the Mediterranean, in the English Channel. It
is to-day only a hundred and fifty years ago since one of these
Algerine craft was wrecked near Penzance in the early autumn.

We mentioned just now the Act of George III. which required craft to
be licensed. This was another of the various means employed for the
prevention of smuggling, and since the passing of this Act those
luggers and cutters which engaged in the running of goods endeavoured
to evade the Act's penalties by possessing themselves of foreign
colours and foreign ship's papers. Now, as a fact, by far the greater
part of such craft belonged to Deal, Folkestone, and other south-coast
ports of England. Their masters were also from the same localities,