Note 411 — Chapter V

The 19 Geo. II. c. 34, made ‘all forcible acts of smuggling, carried on in defiance of the laws, or even in disguise to evade them, felony without benefit of clergy.’ Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. iv. p. 155. Townsend, who travelled through France in 1786, says, that when any of the numerous smugglers were taken, ‘some of them are hanged, some are broken upon the wheel, and some are burnt alive.’ Townsend's Spain, vol. i. p. 85, edit. 1792. On the general operation of the French laws against smugglers in the eighteenth century, compare Tucker's Life of Jefferson, vol. i. pp. 213, 214, with Parliamentary History, vol. ix. p. 1240.