It is wonderful what improvements have taken place in clocks and watches during the last half-century; how accurately the escapements are constructed, how delicately the springs are formed, how easily the wheels move, and what good time they keep. After all, society is but a clock, a very complicated piece of mechanism; and it, too, has undergone, in many countries, the same improvements that have taken place in the little ticking machines that we put in our pockets, or those greater indicators of our progress towards eternity that we hang upon our walls. From the wooden clock, with its weight and catgut, to the exquisite chronometer which varies only by a second or two in the course of the year, what a vast advance! and between even a period which many still living can remember, and that in which I now write, what a change has taken place in the machinery and organization of the land in which we dwell!

In the times which I am about to depict, though feudal ages were gone, though no proud barons ruled the country round from castle and stronghold, though the tumultuous times of the great rebellion had also passed away, and men in buff and bandolier no longer preached, or fought, or robbed, or tyrannized under the name of law and liberty, though the times of the second Charles and the second James, William and Mary, and good Queen Anne, falling collars, and hats and plumes, and floating wigs and broad-tailed coats, were all gone--bundled away into the great lumber-room of the Past--still, dear reader, there was a good deal of the wooden clock about the mechanism of society.

One of the parts in which rudeness of construction and coarseness of material were most apparent, was in the Customs system of the country, and in the impediments which it met with. The escapement was anything but fine. Nowadays we do things delicately. If we wish to cheat the government, we forge Exchequer bills, or bribe landing-waiters and supervisors, or courteously insinuate to a superior officer that a thousand pounds is not too great a mark of gratitude for enabling us to pocket twenty thousand at the expense of the Customs. If we wish to cheat the public, there is chalk for our milk, grains of paradise for our beer, sago and old rags for our sugar, lime for our linen, and devils' dust to cover our backs. Chemistry and electricity, steam and galvanism, all lend their excellent aid to the cheat, the swindler, and the thief; and if a man is inclined to keep himself within respectable limits, and deceive himself and others at the same time with perfect good faith and due decorum, are there not homoeopathy, hydropathy, and mesmerism?

In the days I speak of it was not so. There was a grander roughness and daringness about both our rogues and our theorists. None but a small villain would consent to be a swindler. We had more robbers than cheats; and if a man chose to be an impostor, it was with all the dignity and decision of a Psalmanazor, or a bottle conjuror. Gunpowder and lead were the only chemical agents employed; a bludgeon was the animal magnetism most in vogue, and your senses and your person were attacked and knocked down upon the open road without having the heels of either delicately tripped up by some one you did not see.

Still this difference was more apparent in the system of smuggling than in anything else, and the whole plan, particulars, course of action, and results were so completely opposed to anything that is, or can be in the present day--the scenes, the characters, the very localities have so totally changed, that it may be necessary to pause a moment before we go on to tell our tale, in order to give some sort of description of the state of the country bordering on the sea-coast, at the period to which I allude.

Scarcely any one of the maritime counties was in those days without its gang of smugglers; for if France was not opposite, Holland was not far off; and if brandy was not the object, nor silk, nor wine, yet tea and cinnamon, and hollands, and various East India goods, were things duly estimated by the British public, especially when they could be obtained without the payment of Custom-house dues. But besides the inducements to smuggling which the high price that those dues imposed upon certain articles, held out, it must be remembered that various other commodities were totally prohibited, and, as an inevitable consequence, were desired and sought for more than any others. The nature of both man and woman, from the time of Adam and Eve down to the present day, has always been fond of forbidden fruit; and it mattered not a pin whether the goods were really better or worse, so that they were prohibited, men would risk their necks to get them. The system of prevention also was very inefficient, and a few scattered Custom-House officers, aided by a cruiser here or there upon the coast, had an excellent opportunity of getting their throats cut or their heads broken, or of making a decent livelihood by conniving at the transactions they were sent down to stop, as the peculiar temperament of each individual might render such operations pleasant to him. Thus, to use one of the smugglers' own expressions--a roaring trade in contraband goods was going on along the whole British coast, with very little let or hindrance.

As there are land-sharks and water-sharks, so were there then (and so are there now) land-smugglers and water-smugglers. The latter brought the objects of their commerce, either from foreign countries or from foreign vessels, and landed them on the coast--and a bold, daring, reckless body of men they were; the former, in gangs, consisting frequently of many hundreds, generally well mounted and armed, conveyed the commodities so landed into the interior, and distributed them to others, who retailed them as occasion required. Nor were these gentry one whit less fearless, enterprising, and lawless than their brethren of the sea.

We have not yet done, however, with all the ramifications of this vast and magnificent league, for it extended itself, in the districts where it existed, to almost every class of society. Each tradesman smuggled or dealt in smuggled goods; each public house was supported by smugglers, and gave them in return every facility possible; each country gentleman on the coast dabbled a little in the interesting traffic; almost every magistrate shared in the proceeds or partook of the commodities. Scarcely a house but had its place of concealment, which would accommodate either kegs or bales, or human beings, as the case might be; and many streets in sea-port towns had private passages from one house to another, so that the gentleman inquired for by the officers at No. 1 was often walking quietly out of No. 20, while they were searching for him in vain. The back of one street had always excellent means of communication with the front of another; and the gardens gave exit to the country with as little delay as possible.

Of all counties, however, the most favoured by nature and by art for the very pleasant and exciting sport of smuggling, was the county of Kent; its geographical position, its local features, its variety of coast, all afforded it the greatest advantages; and the daring character of the natives on the shores of the Channel was sure to turn those advantages to the purposes in question. Sussex, indeed, was not without its share of facilities, nor did the Sussex men fail to improve them; but they were so much farther off from the opposite coast, that the commerce--which we may well call the regular trade--was, at Hastings, Rye, and Winchelsea, in no degree to be compared to that which was carried on from the North Foreland to Romney Hoy.

At one time, the fine level of "The Marsh," a dark night and a fair wind, afforded a delightful opportunity for landing a cargo and carrying it rapidly into the interior; at another time, Sandwich Flats and Pevensey Bay presented a harbour of refuge, and a place of repose to kegs innumerable and bales of great value; at another period, the cliffs round Folkestone and near the South Foreland, saw spirits travelling up by paths which seemed inaccessible to mortal foot; and at another, the wild and broken ground at the back of Sandgate was traversed by long trains of horses, escorting or carrying every description of contraband articles.

The interior of the country was not less favourable to the traffic than the coast: large masses of wood, numerous gentlemen's parks, hills and dales tossed about in wild confusion; roads such as nothing but horses could travel, or men on foot, often constructed with felled trees or broad stones laid side by side; wide tracts of ground, partly copse and partly moor, called in that county "minnisses;" and a long extent of the Weald of Kent, through which no high way existed, and where such thing as coach or carriage was never seen, offered the land smugglers opportunities of carrying on their transactions with the degree of secrecy and safety which no other county afforded. Their numbers, too, were so great, their boldness and violence so notorious, their powers of injuring or annoying so various, that even those who took no part in their operations were glad to connive at their proceedings, and at times to aid in concealing their persons or their goods. Not a park, not a wood, not a barn, did not at some period afford them a refuge when pursued, or become a depository for their commodities; and many a man, on visiting his stable or his cart-shed early in the morning, found it tenanted by anything but horses or wagons. The churchyards were frequently crowded at night by other spirits than those of the dead, and not even the church was exempted from such visitations.

None of the people of the county took notice of, or opposed these proceedings; the peasantry laughed at, or aided, and very often got a good day's work, or, at all events, a jug of genuine hollands from the friendly smugglers; the clerk and the sexton willingly aided and abetted, and opened the door of vault, or vestry, or church, for the reception of the passing goods; the clergyman shut his eyes if he saw tubs or stone jars in his way; and it is remarkable what good brandy punch was generally to be found at the house of the village pastor. The magistrates of the county, when called upon to aid in pursuit of the smugglers, looked grave, and swore in constables very slowly; despatched servants on horseback to see what was going on, and ordered the steward or the butler to "send the sheep to the wood," an intimation that was not lost upon those for whom it was intended. The magistrates and officers of seaport towns were in general so deeply implicated in the trade themselves, that smuggling had a fairer chance than the law, in any case that came before them, and never was a more hopeless enterprise undertaken, in ordinary circumstances, than that of convicting a smuggler, unless captured in flagrant delict.

Were it only our object to depict the habits and manners of these worthy people, we might take any given part of the seaward side of Kent that we chose for particular description, for it was all the same. No railroads had penetrated through the country then; no coast blockade was established; even martello-towers were unknown; and in the general confederacy or understanding which existed throughout the whole of the county, the officers found it nearly a useless task to attempt to execute their duty. Nevertheless, as it is a tale I have to tell, not a picture to paint, I may as well dwell for a few minutes upon the scene of the principal adventures about to be related. A long range of hills, varying greatly in height and steepness, runs nearly down the centre of the county of Kent, throwing out spurs or buttresses in different directions, and sometimes leaving broad and beautiful valleys between. The origin or base, if we may so call it, of this range is the great Surrey chain of hills; not that it is perfectly connected with that chain, for in many places a separation is found, through which the Medway, the Stour, and several smaller rivers wind onward to the Thames or to the sea; but still the general connexion is sufficiently marked, and from Dover and Folkestone, by Chart, Lenham, Maidstone, and Westerham on the one side, and Barham, Harbledown, and Rochester on the other, the road runs generally over a long line of elevated ground, only dipping down here and there to visit some town or city of importance which has nested itself in one of the lateral valleys, or strayed out into the plain.

On the northern side of the county, a considerable extent of flat ground extends along the bank and estuary of the Thames from Greenwich to Sandwich and Deal. On the southern side, a still wider extent lies between the high-land and the borders of Sussex. This plain or valley as perhaps it may be called, terminates at the sea by the renowned flat of Romney Marsh. Farther up, somewhat narrowing as it goes, it takes the name of the Weald of Kent, comprising some very rich land and a number of small villages, with one or two towns of no very great importance. This Weald of Kent is bordered all along by the southern side of the hilly range we have mentioned; but strange to say, although a very level piece of ground was to be had through this district, the high road perversely pursued its way up and down the hills, by Lenham and Charing, till it thought fit to descend to Ashford, and thence once more make its way to Folkestone. Thus a great part of the Weald of Kent was totally untravelled; and at one village of considerable size, which now hears almost hourly the panting and screaming steam-engine whirled by, along its iron course, I have myself seen the whole population of the place turn out to behold the wonderful phenomenon of a coach-and-four, the first that was ever beheld in the place. Close to the sea the hills are bare enough; but at no great distance inland, they become rich in wood, and the Weald, whether arable or pasture, or hop-garden or orchard, is so divided into small fields by numerous hedgerows of fine trees, and so diversified by patches of woodland, that, seen at a little distance up the hill--not high enough to view it like a map--it assumes, in the leafy season, almost the look of a forest partially cleared.

Along the southern edge, then, of the hills we have mentioned, and in the plainer valley that stretches away from their feet, among the woods, and hedgerows, and villages, and parks which embellish that district, keeping generally in Kent, but sometimes trespassing a little upon the fair county of Sussex, lies the scene of the tale which is to follow, at a period when the high calling, or vocation, of smuggling was in its most palmy days. But, ere I proceed to conduct the reader into the actual locality where the principal events here recorded really took place, I must pause for an instant in the capital, to introduce him to one or two travelling companions.