At this period of the smuggling era, that is to say prior to the
middle of the eighteenth century, most of the smuggled tea was brought
over to the south coast of England in Folkestone cutters of a size
ranging from fifty to forty tons burthen. These vessels usually came
within about three or four miles of the shore, when they were met by
the smaller boats of the locality and the goods unladened. Indeed the
trade was so successful that as many as twenty or thirty cargoes were
run in a week, and Flushing became so important a base that not merely
did the natives subsidise or purchase Folkestone craft, but
ship-builders actually migrated from that English port to Flushing and
pursued their calling in Dutch territory. As to the reward which the
smugglers themselves made out of the transaction, the rates of payment
varied at a later date, but about the years 1728 and 1729 the
tea-dealers paid the men eight shillings a pound for the commodity.
And in spite of the seizures which were made by the Revenue cutters
and the land guard, yet these losses, admitted a witness, were a mere
trifle to the smugglers. In fact he affirmed that sometimes one
tea-dealer never suffered a seizure in six or seven years. We can
therefore readily believe that the financiers netted a very handsome
profit on the whole, and there are still standing plenty of fine
mansions in different parts of our country which are generally
supposed to have been erected from the proceeds of this form of
activity.

There was a kind of local intelligence bureau in most of the smuggling
centres on the south coast, and so loyal and so watchful were these
craftsmen that the inhabitants of the coast-line managed to let their
_confreres_ know when the Custom House sloops had sailed out of port
or when they hauled up for repairs and refit. As a consequence the
smuggling craft commonly escaped capture. Animated by a natural hatred