present, or was it ever known to be carried on with more
audaciousness," mentioning also that the previous night the snow[5]
_Squirrel_ of North Yarmouth had driven ashore loaded with a cargo of
brandy. The country-folk had immediately boarded her, stripped the
master of everything valuable, and then carried off all the brandy
they could lay their hands on, and, in their haste, had set fire to
the rest of the cargo, so that at the time of writing the whole ship
was in flames. He mentioned also a couple of months later the
difficulty he had to secure arrests of smugglers, for even when he had
obtained warrants for the apprehension of eight most notorious men,
the constables excused themselves from doing their duty in serving the
warrants, and pretended that the eight men had absconded.

And anyone who cares to examine the Treasury Books and Papers for this
period will find similar cases. In July of 1743 some smugglers had
seized the Custom House boat at Dover and coolly employed her for
their own purposes in running tea. The Custom officers deemed matters
to be in such a state that they begged that a man-of-war might be
stationed on that coast to prevent smuggling. Similarly in January of
1743-44, during a skirmish near Arundel between the preventive men
assisted by some dragoons against a band of smugglers, the latter had
wounded three of the soldiers and carried off an officer and two other
dragoons on board the smugglers' cutter. This was no unique
occurrence, for sometimes the contraband runners, when infuriated,
captured the would-be captors, hurried them out to sea, and then,
having bound the unfortunate victims with a bit of spare rope and
having tied a piece of ballast to their live bodies, they would be
hurled overboard into the sea, and the soldier or preventive man would
never be seen or heard of again unless his lifeless body were cast
upon the beach. At Folkestone, about this time, three men were carried