Smuggler Nation (7 page)

What soured British attitudes toward smuggling? Debt and disgust provide much of the answer.
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The long and costly war with the French left Britain saddled with a massive war debt—and stricter customs enforcement in the colonies, it was hoped, would help pay the mounting bills. The war, including large-scale trading with the enemy, also made London more outraged at colonial defiance and more painfully aware of the dismal state of customs administration. Getting serious about customs would therefore generate revenue and be a punitive lesson at the same time. It would also backfire.

In 1763, a few years after coming to the British throne, King George III turned to the former Whig George Grenville to replenish His Majesty’s Treasury. Grenville stayed in office for only a few years, but during that time he helped launch an increasingly militarized anti-smuggling campaign in the American colonies that had profound and long-lasting repercussions. The first move was to clean up the customs service. This included ordering absentee customs officers in England back to their posts in the colonies
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(or lose their jobs), deploying more inspectors (with higher salaries, with the expectation that this would make bribes less tempting), and pushing out customs agents viewed as too corrupt and cozy in their relations with the colonists. Importantly, the new officers would be selected from London rather than the colonies.

The second move was to give customs more power and authority. In particular, the expanded use of the controversial writs of assistance (unrestricted search warrants), first introduced in 1760, enabled more aggressive inspections and seizures. Moreover, smuggling cases could now be tried in admiralty courts without juries—designed to bypass local courts viewed as too sympathetic to colonial merchant interests.
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Customs enforcement was also militarized through the deployment of naval cutters off the coast of the American colonies, tasked with patrolling bays and inlets used for clandestine landings. Prior to 1764, the Royal Navy had largely been on the sidelines in the battle against smuggling, but it would now be given a frontline role, with commissioned naval officers deputized as customs officials.

Trade laws were also revised. In 1764, the Sugar Act replaced the Molasses Act. In a September 1763 report, the Commissioners of Customs acknowledged that the provisions of the Molasses Act
“have been for the most part, either wholly evaded, or Fraudulently compounded.” They therefore recommended both lower duties to “diminish the Temptation to Smuggling,” and more stringent enforcement—the combination of which, they argued, would enhance revenue collection.
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The colonies bitterly opposed these measures to clamp down on smuggling and improve revenue, which reversed a long history of neglect and non-enforcement. Even the Sugar Act, which lowered duties on molasses from six pence to three pence a gallon, was strenuously resisted, for it signaled an intention to actually start enforcing duties on the trade for the first time. And it imposed other duties, such as on Madeira wines, which had become a popular drink in the colonies. The act’s provisions also included stricter compliance procedures, creating more cumbersome paperwork for merchants in securing manifests and listing cargo.

Of all the tools the British used to tighten the screws on illicit trade, none was more controversial and hated than the “writs of assistance.” These open-ended warrants gave customs officials extraordinary leeway in conducting searches for smuggled goods. James Otis, a lawyer who seemed to specialize in representing disgruntled Boston merchants, gained instant fame with a fiery speech denouncing the writs of assistance as a violation of the rights of the colonists as British subjects. Otis lost the case but won the crowd. John Adams, who witnessed the speech, later described its impact: “Every man of an immense crowded audience appeared to go away as I did, ready to take arms against writs of assistance. Then and there was the first scene of the first act of opposition, to the arbitrary rule of Great Britain. Then and there the child Independence was born.”
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The loyalist Peter Oliver was certainly less impressed by Otis, commenting that “He [Otis] engrafted his self into the Body of Smugglers, & they embraced him so close, as a lawyer & an useful Pleader for them, that he soon became incorporated with them.”
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One response by colonial smugglers to the British crackdown was simply adaptation, a shift in smuggling routes and methods to get around tighter enforcement. This helped keep smugglers in business. Still, stepped-up enforcement continued to put a squeeze on what was previously a minimally policed illicit trade. Smugglers were doing their best to cope, but business was not good. Smuggling had become a riskier
and less predictable trade, and this translated into more costs. Some evasive moves prompted countermoves—for example, when smugglers shifted to transferring goods from large vessels to smaller boats offshore (which would then be unloaded in small coves away from major ports and harbors), the British responded with the “hovering vessel” legislation in 1764, which enabled the seizure and forfeiture of vessels loitering within two leagues of the coastline.

Part of the difficulty for colonial smugglers was that corruption—in the form of bribes, “fees,” and other payoffs to customs officials—was no longer as dependable a tool to keep business running smoothly. Informal financial accommodation between merchants and customs agents had long served as pacifying glue. As Governor Francis Bernard in Massachusetts described the situation as the British were beginning to crack down on corruption in 1764, “[I]f conniving at foreign sugars and molasses and Portugal wines and fruits is to be reckoned corruption, there never was, I believe, an uncorrupt customs officer in America.”
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Old corrupt arrangements and relationships, however, were now coming unglued, making bribery less effective and reliable. Consequently, bullying increasingly replaced bribing. The old smuggling game had been win-win, based on personal profit for both law evaders and law enforcers. The new game, in contrast, was zero-sum, based on seizures rather than accommodation; it was purely predatory rather than mutually beneficial.

Colonial opposition to the crackdown on smuggling took many forms. It ranged from legal challenges, protest letters, and boycotts of British goods to mob riots, tarring and feathering of informants, and sacking of customs vessels. Forcible rescues of seized ships and goods by angry mobs became more frequent. A series of humiliating and embarrassing episodes made British authorities increasingly aware that their grip on the colonies was tenuous, at best. For instance, when the first naval cutter sent to patrol off the coast of Rhode Island attempted to stop a vessel on suspicion of smuggling, the British naval captain reported that a group of “riotous” inhabitants forced the gunners of the harbor fort to open fire on his naval vessel. A stunned Treasury ordered that the incident be thoroughly investigated, instructing that those engaged in “an Act so highly criminal as resisting all legal authority, and actually firing the Guns of his Majesty’s Ports against ships of War”
should be fully prosecuted. The order was simply ignored by the colonists and the investigation went nowhere.
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This was not an isolated episode. In another Rhode Island incident in 1764, an impounded vessel was forcibly rescued by a mob of disguised colonists. And in April of the following year, a mob at Dighton in Massachusetts boarded a seized ship, the
Polly
, and ran off with all cargo and furnishings. To add insult to injury, the customs officer responsible for the
Polly
seizure was then arrested and jailed after the ship’s captain filed charges against him for the loss.
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Seizures on land were equally contentious. In one well-known Boston incident in September 1766, Daniel Malcom, an outspoken critic of the trade laws, refused to allow customs agents to search a room in his house suspected of containing a stash of smuggled Madeira wines. When the customs officers returned with a writ of assistance, a crowd formed outside the house in support of Malcom. Intimidated and fearing escalation, the officers backed off. Locals cheered and celebrated Malcom’s bold defiance.
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Customs officials made matters worse by taking advantage of their expanded seizure powers for personal gain. The situation was ready-made for abuse and manipulation. Little oversight and accountability and the potential for high rewards from seizures made for an explosive mix. Officers typically took a sizable cut of the prize money on every seizure made—making overzealous enforcement more tempting. Colonial merchants resented not only the squeeze on smuggling but also the exploits by unscrupulous customs agents that came with it. Such “customs racketeering” was, in the view of colonial merchants, essentially legalized piracy.
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The Royal Navy was especially heavy-handed in carrying out its new policing mandate. Military forces created for fighting wars can be a blunt instrument when deployed to fight smuggling. This was certainly evident in the American colonies, where in the aftermath of the Seven Years War the navy turned its attention to the war against illicit trade. Post-1763 legislation opened the door for greater naval involvement and made seizures on technical grounds easier. The militarization of customs enforcement was bitterly resented in the colonies. Benjamin Franklin described the navy’s new anti-smuggling job in especially harsh terms with a heavy dose of sarcasm:

Convert the brave, honest officers of your
navy
into pimping tide-waiters and colony officers of the
customs
. Let those who in the time of war fought gallantly in defense of their countrymen, in peace be taught to prey upon it. Let them learn to be corrupted by great and real smugglers; but (to show their diligence) scour with armed boats every bay, harbor, river, creek, cove, or nook throughout your colonies; stop and detain every coaster, every wood-boat, every fisherman; tumble their cargoes and even their ballast inside out and upside down; and, if a penn’orth of [dressmakers’] pins is found unentered [on the cargo manifest], let the whole be seized and confiscated. Thus shall the trade of your colonists suffer more from their friends in time of peace, than it did from their enemies in war.… O,
this will work admirably!
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Deploying the Royal Navy to battle illicit trade not only antagonized merchants but also created feuds and rivalries between customs and naval officers competing over turf and claims to the proceeds of seized goods. Relations between the navy and the customs service were strained, at best. In one incident, a seizure off the coast of Massachusetts initiated by a naval captain was even re-seized and claimed by a customs officer.
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Seizures also depended on informers, who served as the “eyes and ears” for customs—and in turn were rewarded with a portion of the proceeds. It is little surprise, therefore, that they were greatly despised locally. A comment from the
Pennsylvania Journal
reflected the intensity of resentment: “The swarms of searchers, tide waiters, spies, and other underlings, with which every port in America now abounds, and which were unknown before the Board of Commissioners was established among us, are not it seems, quite sufficient to ruin our trade, but infamous informers, like dogs of prey thirsting after the fortunes of worthy and wealthy men, are let loose and encouraged to seize and libel.”
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In October 1773 the
Journal
even published a description of an informer who had been dispatched from Boston, and urged that “All lovers of Liberty will make diligent search and having found this bird of darkness will produce him tarred and feathered at the Coffee-House, there to expiate his sins against his country by a public recantation.”
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Colonial leaders attempted in vain to persuade London that it was in its own self-interest to tolerate smuggling and return to the status quo ante. Such candid pleas were an open admission of colonial reliance on illicit trade. “Putting an end to the importation of foreign molasses,” warned Rhode Island Governor Stephen Hopkins, “at the same time puts an end to all the costly distilleries in these colonies, and to the rum trade to the coast of Africa, and throws it into the hands of the French. With the loss of the foreign molasses trade, the cod fishery of the English in America must also be lost and thrown also into the hands of the French.”
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Without the revenue from the foreign molasses trade, Hopkins and other colonial leaders emphasized, the colonies would simply not be able to afford British goods. The Assembly of Rhode Island explained the situation in blunt terms. Rhode Island, they reported, purchased £120,000 sterling of British manufactures annually yet produced not much more than £5,000 sterling in exports. The profits from the molasses trade made up the difference, making it possible for the colony to keep importing British goods. In New York, a memorial to the British Parliament was equally blunt and offered even more startling figures: New York’s imports exceeded exports by nearly £470,000 sterling—with the difference made up by the trade in French molasses.
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These arguments were repeated in private correspondence. For instance, William Cooper, secretary of the Boston town meeting, wrote to a fellow Bostonian in England in 1768: “You know what has been called an illicit trade has been wink’d at by all former Administrations, it being eventually more profitable to Britain than the Colonies. Our trade with the Spanish Main & Spanish & French W Indies, as also the Mediterranean, furnished us with large Remittances for the British Merchants.” He went on to complain that, “[T]hese Channels are now dryed up … [and] for every penny drawn from us in the way of Revenue, Britain misses ten in the way of trade.”
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