The inactive proprietor offers his merchandise for sale; the actual smuggler risks his liberty, his honor, and his life.

If success crowns the enterprise, the courageous servant gets paid for his journey; the profit goes to the coward.

If fortune or treachery delivers the instrument of this execrable traffic into the hands of the custom-house officer, the master-smuggler suffers a loss which a more fortunate voyage will soon repair.

The agent, pronounced a scoundrel, is thrown into prison in company with robbers; while his glorious patron, a juror, elector, deputy, or minister, makes laws concerning expropriation, monopoly, and custom-houses! I promised, at the beginning of this letter, that no attack on property should escape my pen, my only object being to justify myself before the public by a general recrimination.

But I could not refrain from branding so odious a mode of exploitation, and I trust that this short digression will be pardoned.