and when at last the incident had blown over he could find his way
back to Kent or Sussex.

It was reckoned that about this time there were at least 20,000 people
in England employed in smuggling, and in some parts (as, for instance,
the village of Hawkhurst, about which we shall have more to say
presently) gangs of large numbers could be got together in a very
short time. In Hawkhurst alone 500 smugglers could be collected within
an hour. Folkestone, however, ran Hawkhurst fairly close with a
similar notoriety. Such gangs, well armed as they were, went about
with impunity, for notwithstanding that they were well known, yet no
one dared to molest them.

We mentioned just now that the danger to the State of this import
smuggling was not merely that goods were brought into the country
without payment being made to the Customs, but that inasmuch as the
contraband goods were purchased abroad partly by wool and partly by
actual coin England was being robbed both ways. And as the wool
exportation declined and the import smuggling rose, so the amount of
gold that passed out of the country seriously increased. At least
£1,000,000 sterling were carried out of the kingdom each year to
purchase these goods, and of this amount somewhere about £800,000 were
paid for tea alone. At a later date the price of tea often went up,
but the dealer still made a profit of 40s. on every 100 lbs. We
alluded just now also to the dangers of seizure, and it is worth
remarking that these were recognised by the smugglers as being greater
in one district than in another. For instance, it was much more
difficult to run goods into the counties of Kent and Sussex than into
Suffolk, owing to the fleet at sea and the troops on the coast. And
as to the amount of support which could be relied on it was an