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Show 70 ON SMUGGLING: [G.P.] he would be pleafcd to become an accomplice in the crime, and mint in the perpetration. There are thole who by thefe practices take a great deal in a year out of the public purfe, and put the money into their own private pockets. If pafiing through a room where public trea- fure is depofited, a man takes the opportunity of clandeftinely pocketing and carrying of a guinea, is he not truly and properly a thief? And if another evades paying into the treafury' a guinea he ought to pay in, and applies it to his own ufe, when he knows it belongs to the public as much as that which has been paid in ; what difl‘erence is there in the nature of the crime, or the bafenefs of committing it? Some laws make the receiving of Ptolen goods equally penal with fiealing, and upon this principle, that if there were no receivers there would be few thieves. Our proverb too, fays truly, that the receiver 1': a: had a: the thief. By the fame reafoning, as there would be few finugglers, if there were none who knowingly en- couraged them by buying their goods, we may AND ITS VARIOUS SPECIES. 71 hearts Were pure and unfullied? The American: offend us grievoufly, when, contrary to our laws they fmuggle goods into their own country: and yet they had no hand in making thofe laws. I do not however pretend from thence tojuftifv them. But I think the ofence much greater 1n thofe who either directly or indirectly have been concerned in making the very laws they break. And when I hear them exclaimin againfl theflmerz'eam, and for every little infrin ement of the acts of trade, or obf'truétion gi§en by a petty mob to an oflicer of our cuftoms that country, calling for vengeance againft in the whole people as REBELS and Traitors; I cannot help thinking there are fiill thofe in the world who can fie a more in their hroz‘her': eye, while they dofzoz‘ dz'feem a heezm 2'72 their awn ; and that the old faying is as true now as ever it was, one man may hetz‘erfleal a horfi, than another [ooh over the hedge . F. B. fay that the encouragers of fmuggling are as bad as the fmugglers ; and that as fmugglers are a kind of thieves, both equally deferve the pu- nifhments of thievery. In this View of wronging the revenue, what muft we think of thofe who can evade paying for their wheels and their plate, in defiance of law and juf'cice, and yet declaim againft corruption and peculation, as if their own hands and hearts flPARABLE |
