The Smuggler A Tale. Volumes I-III

By author of “Darnley� “De L’orme� “Richelieu� Volumes 1-3 of 3. It would be almost superfluous to assure you of my esteem and regard; but feelings of personal friendship are rarely assigned as the sole motives of a dedication. The qualities however which command public respect and the services which have secured it to you in so high a degree must appear a sufficient motive for offering you this slight tribute in the eyes not only of those who know and love you in the relations of private life but of all the many who have marked your career either as a lawyer alike eminent in learning and in eloquence or as a just impartial clear-sighted and yet merciful judge.You will willingly accept the book I know for the sake of the author; though perhaps you may have neither time nor inclination to read it. Accept the dedication also I beg as a sincere testimony of respect from one who having seen a good deal of the world and studied mankind attentively is not easily induced to reverence or won to regard.When you look upon this page it will probably call to your mind some very pleasant hours which would doubtless have been as agreeable if I had not been there. As I write it it brings up before my eyes many a various scene of which you and yours were the embellishment and the light. At all events such memories must be pleasant to us both; for they refer to days almost without a shadow when the magistrate and the legislator escaped from care and thought and the laborious man of letters cast away his toil.In the following pages you will find more than one place depicted as familiar to your remembrance as to mine; and if I have taken some liberties with a few localities stolen a mile or two off certain distances or deprived various hills and dales of their due proportions these faults are of a species of petty larceny on which I do not think you will pass a severe sentence and I hope the public will imitate your lenity.I trust that no very striking errors will meet your eye for I believe I have given a correct picture of the state of society in this good county of Kent as it existed some eighty or ninety years ago; and in regard to the events if you or any of my readers should be inclined to exclaim-“This incident is not probable!� I have an answer ready quite satisfactory to myself whatever it may be to others; namely that “the improbable incident� is true. All the more wild stirring and what may be called romantic parts of the tale are not alone founded upon fact but are facts; and the narrative owes me nothing more than a gown owes to a sempstress-namely the mere sewing of it together with a very common-place needle and thread. In short a few characters thrown in for relief a little love a good deal of landscape and a few tiresome reflections are all that I have added to a simple relation of transactions well known to many in this part of the country as having actually happened a generation or two ago. Among these recorded incidents are the attack of Goudhurst Church by the smugglers its defence by the peasantry the pursuit and defeat of the free-traders of those days by the Dragoons the implication of some persons of great wealth in the most heinous parts of the transaction the visit of Mowle the officer in disguise to the meeting-place of his adversaries his accidental detection by one of them and the bold and daring maneuver of the smuggler Harding as related near the close of the work. Another incident but too sadly true-namely the horrible deed by which some of the persons taking a chief part in the contraband trade called down upon themselves the fierce enmity of the peasantry-I have but lightly touched upon for reasons you will understand and appreciate. But it is some satisfaction to know that there were just judges in those days as well as at present and that the perpetrators of one of the most brutal crimes on record suffered (Continued...)