of all Government officials in general, especially of all those whose
duty it was to collect taxes, dues, and any kind of tolls; disliking
most of all the men of the Customs and Excise, and, further, being
allied by sympathy and blood relationship to many of the smugglers
themselves, it was almost impossible for the representatives of the
Crown to make any steady progress in their work. We all know that when
a number of even average law-abiding people get together, that crowd
somehow tends towards becoming a mob. Each person, so to speak,
forfeits his own individuality, that becomes merged into the
personality and character of the mob, which all the time is being
impelled to break out into something unlawful of a minor or greater
degree. Whenever you have stood among crowds you must have noted this
for yourself. It gets restive at the least opposition with which it is
confronted, it boos and jeers with the smallest incitement; and,
finally, realising the full strength of its unity, breaks out into
some rash violence and rushes madly on, heedless of the results. Many
murders have been in this way committed by men who ordinarily and in
their individual capacity would shrink from such crimes. But having
become merely one of the limbs, as it were, of the crowd they have
moved with the latter and obeyed its impulses.

It was just the same when many of the dwellers of the country-side,
many of the fishermen, labourers, and farm-hands found themselves
assembled on the report of a pistol shot or the cry of angry voices
coming up from the beach below. Something was happening, some one was
in trouble, and the darkness of the night or the gloom of the fog
added a halo of mystery round the occasion. Men and women came out
from their cottages, some one got hit, and then a general affray
began. Clubs and pistols and cutlasses were busy, men were bellowing
forth oaths, women shrieking, and the galloping of horses heard