Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/201

 M U S M Y 185 In the course of this hard miscellaneous task-work, under which Smollett's health gave way completely, he wrote by instalments for the British Magazine (in 1760 and 1761) the curious satirical romance of Sir Lancelot Greaves. It is only in externals that this work bears any resemblance to Don Quixote. The author seems to have hesitated between making Sir Lancelot a mere madman and making him a pattern of perfectly sane generosity. The fun and the seriousness do not harmonize. The young knight's craze for riding about the country to redress wrongs armed cap-a-pie is too harshly out of tune with the right- ness of his sympathies and the grave character of the real abuses against which his indignation is directed. In execu- tion the work is very unequal and irregular, but the open- ing chapters are very powerful, and have been imitated by hundreds of novelists since Smollett's time. Upon the failure of his health in 1763 Smollett went abroad and lived in France and Italy for three years. He published two volumes of Travels soon after his return in 1766. Three year.s more he spent in England, trying in vain to get some consular post abroad, where the climate might suit his shattered constitution. His extremely clever and extremely coarse political satire, The Adventures of an Atom, published in 1769, was probably inspired partly by resentment at the neglect of his own claims by successive ministries. He left England soon after its publication, and spent the last two years of his life in a house at Monte Novo in the neighbourhood of Leghorn. Here, labouring under a painful and wasting disease, he composed his last work, The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker, published in 1771. This is generally regarded as his best novel. It certainly is the most pleasant reading, much softer and more humane in tone, while equally alive with vivid sketches and studies of character and a never-failing supply of ludicrous adventures. The loose and easy plan does not require for its execution the sustained power shown in Count Fathom ; but, on the other hand, it leaves the novelist free to introduce greater variety of character and incident. None of his novels gives a better impression of Smollett's versatility than Humphrey Clinker, and there is none of them to which his successors have been more indebted. But whoever would understand how much the English novel owes to Smollett must read all his five fictions and not merely the most celebrated three. His influence upon novel-writing was wider even than Fielding's. He died at Monte Novo on 21st October 1771. (w. M.) SMUGGLING denotes a breach of the revenue laws either by the importation or the exportation of prohibited goods or by the evasion of customs duties on goods liable to duty. Smuggling is, as might be expected, most pre- valent where duties are high. The best preventive is the imposition of duties so low in amount and on so few articles that it becomes scarcely worth while to smuggle. Legisla- tion on the subject in England has been very active from the 14th century downwards. In the reign of Edward III. the illicit introduction of base coin from abroad led to the provision of the Statute of Treasons (25 Edw. III. st. 5) making it treason to import counterfeit money as the money called " Lushburgh." Such importation is still an offence, though no longer treason. After the Statute of Treasons a vast number of Acts dealing with smuggling were passed, most of which will be found recited in the repealing Act of 6 Geo. IV. c. 105. In the 18th and the early years of the 19th century smuggling (chiefly of wine, spirits, tobacco, and bullion) was so generally prac- tised in Great Britain as to become a kind of national fail- ing, and the smuggler was often regarded as a popular hero, like the contrabandista of modern Spain. The prevalence of the offence a century and a half ago may be judged from the report of Sir J. Cope's committee in 1732 upon the frauds on the revenue. The smuggler of the 1 8th century finds an apologist in Adam Smith, who writes of him as "a person who, though no doubt highly blamable for vio- lating the laws of his country, is frequently incapable of violating those of natural justice, and would have been in every respect an excellent citizen had not the laws of his country made that a crime which nature never meant to be so." The gradual reduction of duties has brought the offence in the United Kingdom into comparative insig- nificance, and it is now almost confined to tobacco. Most of the existing legislation on the subject of smuggling is contained in the Customs Consolidation Act, 1876 (39 and 40 Viet. c. 36, ss. 169-217). The main provisions are as follows. Vessels engaged in smug- gling are liable to forfeiture and their owners and masters to a penalty not exceeding 500. Smuggled and prohibited goods are liable to forfeiture. Officers of customs have a right of search of vessels and persons. Fraudulent evasion or attempted evasion of customs duties renders the offender subject to forfeit either treble the value of the goods or 100 at the election of the commissioners of customs. Heavy penalties are incurred by resistance to officers of customs, rescue of person or goods, assembling to ran goods, signalling smuggling vessels, shooting at vessels, boats, or officers of the naval or revenue service, cutting adrift customs vessels, offering goods for sale under pretence of being smuggled, &c. Penalties may be recovered either by action or information in the superior courts or by summary proceedings. In criminal proceed- ings the defendant is competent and compellable to give evidence. The Act applies to the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands. Besides, the Customs Act, 50 Geo. III. c. 41, s. 16 (the corresponding Act for Scotland is 55 Geo. III. c. 71, s. 9), enacts that a hawker's licence is to be forfeited on his conviction for knowingly selling smuggled goods. The Merchant Shipping Act, 1854 (17 and 18 Viet. c. 104, s. 243), makes any seaman or apprentice, after conviction for smuggling whereby loss or damage is caused to the master or owner of a ship, liable to pay to such master or owner such a sum as is sufficient to reimburse the master or owner for such loss or damage, and the whole or a proportional part of his wages may be retained in satisfaction of this liability. Additional provisions as to smuggling are also contained in 42 and 43 Viet. c. 21 and 44 and 45 Viet. c. 12. A smuggling contract is generally illegal. But it may be valid, and the vendor may re- cover the price of goods, even though he knew the buyer intended them to be smuggled, unless he actually aids in the smuggling so as to become particcps cri minis. Contracts to defraud the revenue of a foreign state are, according to English decisions, not illegal. There is a German decision, more consonant with international morality, to the opposite effect. The penalties for smuggling in the United States will be found nminly in tit. xxxiv. ch. 10 of the Revised Statutes. The seaman guilty of smuggling is liable to the same penalty as in England, and in addition to imprisonment for twelve months, s. 4596. A considerable amount of historical information on this subject will be found in Dowell's History of Taxation and Pike's History of Crime in England. SMYRNA, in ancient times one of the most important and now by far the greatest of the cities of Asia Minor (see vol. xv. Plate II.), has preserved an unbroken con- tinuity of record and identity of name from the first dawn of history to the present time. It is said to have been a Lelegian city before the Greek colonists settled in Asia Minor. The name, which is said to be derived from an Amazon called Smyrna, is indubitably Anatolian, having been applied also to a quarter of Ephesus, and (under the cognate form Myrina) to a city of yEolis, and to a tumulus in the Troad. The ^Eolic settlers of Lesbos and Cyme, pushing eastwards by Larissa and Neonteichus and over the Hermus, seized the valley of Smyrna. It was the frontier city between JEolis on the north and Ionia on the south, and was more accessible on the south and east than on the north and west. At the same time it was by virtue of its favourable situation necessarily a commercial city, like the Ionian colonies. It is there- fore not surprising that the ^Eolic element grew weaker ; strangers or refugees from the Ionian Colophon settled in the city, and finally Smyrna passed into the hands of the Colophonians and became the thirteenth of the Ionian states. The change had taken place before 688, when the Ionian Onomastus of Smyrna won the boxing prize at XXII. 24