sugar and molasses and Portugal wines and fruits be deemed corruption, then there never was, I believe, an uncorrupt customs officer in America in the twelve months."

During the eighteenth century, smuggling was extensively carried on along the Connecticut coasts, especially at the eastern and western extremities of Long Island Sound. At Fisher's Island there were erected small warehouses or shacks wherein the smugglers stored their goods, and ruins of which still stand. Incoming vessels from foreign ports would lie-to or anchor off the spot, send their contraband ashore, and with a cargo fully entered on their manifests, sail to New London or other ports. Later, the contraband would be smuggled in by small craft as opportunity offered. At many spots also, underground tunnels extended from the cellars of houses to convenient landing places on the shores. The old Benedict Arnold house at New Haven had such a passage which was disclosed when the surrounding territory was dug up for the erection of modern buildings; a house between Hartford and Wethersfield on the Connecticut River also possesses one of these tunnels; another is at Noank, Connecticut, and there are still others at various localities about Stamford, Fairfield and other ports. These hidden passages were not only used for smuggling

purposes, but in time of trouble or war, afforded a means of safe exit and entry and communication.

Just as in England the people were heart and hand with the smugglers when unjust taxes forced smuggling upon them, so, in the American colonies, the smugglers had the moral, and often physical, support of the community. In Philadelphia in 1769, a revenue officer, John Swift, seized a cargo of Madeira wine and placed the confiscated liquor in a warehouse. But just as the Hawkhurst gangand present-day rum runners-broke into the storehouse and recovered the goods, so the citizens of Philadelphia stoned the collector's house, broke open the warehouse and recovered the seized wine. And although the owner returned the liquor to the government officers, and the leader of the mob was arrested, the citizens were so indignant that those who had given evidence and information in the case were seized, pilloried and tarred and feathered.

Interesting side lights on the attitude of old New England merchants and shippers towards smuggling are often to be found among the old letters, documents and records of the times. Thus, in 1774, Captain John Wright, master of the schooner SPEEDWELL of Wethersfield, Conn., wrote from New York to the vessel's owner, Mr. Samuel Boardman, as follows: "It is reported that a British man-of-warship is cruising off Block Island and if any schooner or shipp is found with

counterband she will be seized." Then, after speaking of his voyage, he added. "It is very dangerous coming to New York with counterband. The manofwarship has seized five vessels with cargoes and has them all chained alongside the man of warshipp."

Among a collection of old letters preserved by the Connecticut Historical Society at Hartford, Conn., is one from a worthy Quaker merchant of Rhode Island addressed to a Connecticut skipper and ship owner. After various other matters of little interest, he says, "I received the black thee sent to me and I have sold him for one hundred and thirty-two pounds. I will receive no more smuggled blacks from thee as there is too great danger in dealing with them. If thee cannot pay the duty on thy blacks then must thee find some other merchant for the disposal of them. It is different with other commodities and these will I handle for thee."

In the eighteenth century, in many Spanish colonies, the law provided that all currency received by shipmasters for their cargoes must be expended in the ports where received. This did not at all please the Yankee skippers trading at the ports, and Captain George Crane of Wethersfield, Conn., succeeded in smuggling out his gold and silver in a very clever manner. He was in the habit of making very large purchases of fruits and veg

etables, for use on shipboard, just before sailing, and he invariably cleared from the ports without a single peso in local money in his possession, as far as the Spanish authorities could ascertain, and yet he always had a large stock of doubloons and pieces of eight when he reached Connecticut. How he did it was long a mystery, until Captain Crane, having abandoned the seaman's life, related how he has secreted the coins in squashes and calabashes which went aboard his ship with the other vegetables.

Even a better idea of the public's attitude towards smugglers and the customs may be gleaned from an article in the PENNSYLVANIA JOURNAL of October, 1773. In connection with the arrival of a revenue spy, Eben Richardson, who had been sent from Boston to Philadelphia, the paper says: "All lovers of Liberty will make diligent search, and having found this Bird of Darkness, will produce him, tarred and feathered, at the Coffee House."

Indeed, these laws, the smuggling, and the popular feeling that was thereby induced, led directly to our Declaration of Independence and the War of the Revolution, so, perhaps, we should be most thoroughly grateful to the smugglers of colonial times, instead of considering them criminals. But while the colonials as a whole were in sympathy with the smugglers, there were others who, hypo

crites as they were, turned smugglers to aid the British when, a little later, war was declared.

These were the Quaker Tories of Rhode Island and Massachusetts, who, refusing to take up arms on either side, on the grounds of religious scruples, smuggled arms and ammunition from the New England ports to British war vessels off shore.

But whatever reasons and good excuses the prerevolutionary smugglers had for their acts, they did not apply to those who flourished and carried on their trade after the States had become free. And it was after the war that smuggling reached its highest peak in our country.

Smuggling, especially traffic between the Tories and the British, on the coast of Connecticut, became so prevalent that in January, 1780, the General Assembly of Connecticut imposed upon each coast town the duty of maintaining small armed craft to protect the towns and shipping and to prevent "illicit trade." So numerous were the smugglers at the eastern end of Long Island Sound that the law provided that, in the short distance between New London and Lyme, there must be at least two vessels constantly on patrol duty. The same year the Governor was empowered to issue commissions to not more than twelve small armed vessels to cruise on the Sound and prevent smuggling, but not beyond the first of January, 1781. This power being conferred in order to provide coast guard vessels during the period when the towns were