smuggling. The Custom-house officers, most of them easy-going men, did not frequently see a smuggling transaction till they broke their shins against the tubs, and then a percentage was agreed upon and the rest let go, so that not uncommonly they were as deep in the mud as the smugglers were in the mire. When the Coast-blockade were put on, things were altered. The Coast-blockade consisted of men drafted from ships of war, no longer wanted as sailors, the war being over ; they went about their work in a rough bull-dog sort of fashion. They went out heavily armed, and were not slow in using their arms. I have been in formed by credible persons that if they wanted to enter a house in which they suspected any smuggler was concealed, they would unceremoniously smash open the door with the butt-ends of their muskets, and when inside would bundle women and children , bed and all, on to the floor. This incensed the smugglers, who imagined that, having bought goods and paid for them, in running them they were only securing their own property. They then took to arming themselves, first with bats (stout ashen poles, seven or eight feet long), and then with fire-arms. The foregoing ex tracts show some of the results. When the Coast guard superseded the Coast-blockade, things im proved ; the lowering of the import duties aided in the work, and smuggling is now happily almost a thing of the past.
One cannot help remarking the contrast between the present Coast-guard and the Coast-blockade which they superseded . I am not sure that the Coast-guard carry any arms when on duty in the daytime ; during the night they carry a revolver, a blue light, and I believe a sword-cane. The Coast-blockade always carried a brace of pistols, and in the night a cutlass and a musket and bayonet, and there are old smugglers who -
