of all the men of the Customs and Excise, and, further, being allied by sympathy and blood relationship to many of the smugglers themselves, it was almost impossible for the representatives of the Crown to make any steady progress in their work.  We all know that when a number of even average law-abiding people get together, that crowd somehow tends towards becoming a mob.  Each person, so to speak, forfeits his own individuality, that becomes merged into the personality and character of the mob, which all the time is being impelled to break out into something unlawful of a minor or greater degree.  Whenever you have stood among crowds you must have noted this for yourself.  It gets restive at the least opposition with which it is confronted, it boos and jeers with the smallest incitement; and, finally, realising the full strength of its unity, breaks out into some rash violence and rushes madly on, heedless of the results.  Many murders have been in this way committed by men who ordinarily and in their individual capacity would shrink from such crimes.  But having become merely one of the limbs, as it were, of the crowd they have moved with the latter and obeyed its impulses.

It was just the same when many of the dwellers of the country-side, many of the fishermen, labourers, and farm-hands found themselves assembled on the report of a pistol shot or the cry of angry voices coming up from the beach below.  Something was happening, some one was in trouble, and the darkness of the night or the gloom of the fog added a halo of mystery round the occasion.  Men and women came out from their cottages, some one got hit, and then a general affray began.  Clubs and pistols and cutlasses were busy, men were bellowing forth oaths, women shrieking, and the galloping of horses heard rapidly approaching.  Amid such excitements we can readily understand that a good many acts of violence and deep injury occurred which afterwards, when the heat of the event had vaporised, were regretted.  At the same time, notwithstanding that one is aware that the men were engaged in an unlawful pursuit and that they themselves fully appreciated their degree of guilt, yet we cannot but feel some sort of sympathy with a crew who, after a long and exciting passage through bad weather all the way across the Channel, after perhaps a breathless race against the Government cruisers, had finally succeeded in landing their tubs on the shore only to be pounced on immediately by the riding officers and a posse of dragoons.  It must have been heart-breaking that all their carefully laid plans, all their hardships and trials should end in disaster.  Realising this and that their craft as well as their persons would be seized, it was but natural that they would fight like the most desperate of men.  And, at the same time, those their relatives on shore who largely depended on them for their bread and butter would rush to their aid with a spirit and an impetuosity that could only end in one way.  The pity of it all was that so much fine daring and enthusiasm were not being employed for a better cause and for more worthy results.