quantities of French linings, wines, and brandies were being run
ashore with impunity and speedily sold in the adjacent towns or
conveyed some distance into Devonshire. The mayor therefore begged the
Treasury for three additional Custom officers consisting of an
inspector of roads and two tide-waiters to be established at Saltash,
but the Treasury could not see their way to grant such a request.

But in other parts of the country the roads were kept carefully
watched to prevent goods being brought inland. The coaches which ran
from Dover to London with passengers who had come across from the
Continent were frequently stopped on the highway by the
riding-officers and the passengers searched. Harsh as this mode of
procedure may seem to us to-day, yet it was rendered necessary by the
fact that a good many professional carriers of contraband goods were
wont to travel backwards and forwards between England and abroad. Some
years later, for example, when the Dover coach was stopped at "The
Half-Way House," a foreigner, who was travelling by this conveyance
and had been able to evade the Customs' search at Dover, was found to
be carrying two gold snuff-boxes set with diamonds, four lockets also
set with diamonds, eighteen opals, three sapphires, eight amethysts,
six emeralds, two topazes, and one thousand two hundred
torquoises--all of which were liable to duty.

And thus the illegal practices continued all round the coast. From
Devonshire it was reported that smuggling was on the increase--this
was in the autumn of 1759--and that large gangs armed with loaded
clubs openly made runs of goods on the shore, the favourite _locale_
being Torbay, though previously the neighbourhood of Lyme had been the
usual aim of these men who had sailed as a rule from Guernsey. All
that the Collector could suggest was that an "impress smack" should be