It was noted that a great deal of this contraband stuff was fetched over from Flushing and from Middleburgh, a few miles farther up on the canal.  The big merchant sailing ships brought the tea from the East to Holland, France, Sweden, and Denmark.  But the Dutch, the French, the Swedes, and the Danes were not great tea drinkers, and certainly used it in nothing like the quantities which were consumed in England.  But it was profitable to them to purchase this East Indian product and to sell it again to the smugglers who were wont to run across from England.  It should be added, however, that the species of tea in question were of the cheaper qualities.  It was also frankly admitted in evidence that many of the civil magistrates, whose duty it was to grant warrants for the arrest of these delinquents, were intimidated by the smugglers, while the officers of the Customs and Excise were terrorised.

At this period of the smuggling era, that is to say prior to the middle of the eighteenth century, most of the smuggled tea was brought over to the south coast of England in Folkestone cutters of a size ranging from fifty to forty tons burthen.  These vessels usually came within about three or four miles of the shore, when they were met by the smaller boats of the locality and the goods unladened.  Indeed the trade was so successful that as many as twenty or thirty cargoes were run in a week, and Flushing became so important a base that not merely did the natives subsidise or purchase Folkestone craft, but ship-builders actually migrated from that English port to Flushing and pursued their calling in Dutch territory.  As to the reward which the smugglers themselves made out of the transaction, the rates of payment varied at a later date, but about the years 1728 and 1729 the tea-dealers paid the men eight shillings a pound for the commodity.  And in spite of the seizures which were made by the Revenue cutters and the land guard, yet these losses, admitted a witness, were a mere trifle to the smugglers.  In fact he affirmed that sometimes one tea-dealer never suffered a seizure in six or seven years.  We can therefore readily believe that the financiers netted a very handsome profit on the whole, and there are still standing plenty of fine mansions in different parts of our country which are generally supposed to have been erected from the proceeds of this form of activity.

There was a kind of local intelligence bureau in most of the smuggling centres on the south coast, and so loyal and so watchful were these craftsmen that the inhabitants of the coast-line managed to let their confreres know when the Custom House sloops had sailed out of port or when they hauled up for repairs and refit.  As a consequence the smuggling craft commonly escaped capture.  Animated by a natural hatred of all Government officials in general, especially of all those whose duty it was to collect taxes, dues, and any kind of tolls; disliking most