LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
SMUGGLING AND THE "PLAN OF CAMPAIGN."
rTo THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR:1
Sin,—Your note in the Spectator of April 27th on Lord Salisbury's illustration of the "Plan of Campaign" by the practice of smuggling, is singularly enforced by the description Mr. Lecky gives in his third volume of "The History of England," of the difficulties the English Government met with in trying to put down smuggling during the French war in the middle of the last century:—.
"Smuggling," he says (p. 302), "was very lucrative, and there- fore very popular, and any attempt to interfere with it greatly resented. At a time when Great Britain was straining every nerve to conquer Canada from the French, when the security of British America was one of the first objects of English policy, and when large sums were remitted from England to pay the Colonies for fighting in their own cause, it was found that the French fleets, the French garrisons, and the French West India Islands were systematically supplied with large quantities of provisions by the New England Colonies The smuggling was even defended with a wonderful cynicism, on the ground that it was good policy to make as much money as possible out of the enemy. Pitt, who still directed affairs, wrote with great indignation that this trade must be at all hazards suppressed; but the whole mercantile com- munity of the New England seaports appears to have favoured or partaken in it, and great difficulties were found in putting the law into execution."
St. Katharine's Lodge, Regent's Park, N.W., April 29th.
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