33 - Smuggling

Summary

Smuggling is a real crime against the sovereign and the nation, but the punishment of it should not involve dishonour since it does not seem disgraceful in the eyes of the public. If humiliating punishments are given to crimes which are not held to be dishonourable, then the feeling of disgrace aroused by those that really are so diminishes. One who sees the same punishment of death, for instance, for the killer of a pheasant as for the killer of a man or for the forger of an important document, cannot see any difference among these crimes. In this way the moral sentiments are destroyed, feelings which are the work of many centuries and much blood, and which are so slow and difficult to kindle in human hearts that it was believed necessary to employ the most sublime motives and the trappings of solemn ceremonial to arouse them.

This is a crime which arises from the law itself because the higher the custom duty, the greater the advantage; and so the temptation to smuggle and the ease of committing it grow as the borders to be protected lengthen and the volume of goods necessary for a profit diminishes. Punishment by confiscation of both the contraband goods and the gear found with it is very fair, but the lower the duty the more effective it would be, since men do not take risks except in proportion to the profit they expect to result from a successful venture.