SMUGGLING.

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short visit: “Bring only two or throe of your laced shirts, and therest plain ones.”

The revenue officers made frequent visits to the tailors’ shopsand confiscated whatever articles they found of foreign manufacture.

On the 1 Oth January 1752, a considerable quantity of foreignlace, gold and silver, seized at a tailor’s, who paid the penaltyof 100/., was publicly burnt. 3

Oeorge III., who really from his coming to the throne endea-voured to protect English manufactures, ordered, in 1764, all thestuffs and laces worn at the marriage of his sister, the PrincessAugusta, to the Duke of Brunswick, to be of English make.To this decree the nobility paid little attention. Three daysprevious to the marriage, a descent was made by the customs onthe court milliner of the day, and nearly the whole of the clothes,silver, gold stuff’s and lace, carried off, to the dismay of the modiste,as well as of the ladies thus deprived of their finery. The disgustedFrench milliner retired with a fortune of 11,000!. to Versailles,where she purchased a villa, which, in base ingratitude to theEnglish court, she called “ La Folie des Dames Anglaises.” InHay of the same year, three wedding garments, together with alarge seizure of French lace, weighing nearly 100 lbs., were burntat Hr. Coxe’s refinery', conformably to the act of parliament. Thefollowing birthday, warned by the foregoing mischances, thenobility appeared in clothes and laces entirely of British manu-facture.

Every paper tells how lace and ruffles of great value, sold onthe previous day, had been seized in a hackney coach, between St.Paul’s and Covent Garden ; how a lady of rank was stopped in herchair, and relieved of French lace to a large amount ; or how apoor woman, carelessly picking a quartern loaf as she walked along,was arrested, and the loaf found to contain 200/. worth of lace.Even ladies, when walking, had their black lace mittens cut offtheir hands, the officers supposing them to be of French manu-facture ; and lastly, a Turk’s turban, of most Hameluke dimensions,was found, containing a stuffing of 90/. worth of lace. Books,bottles, babies, false-bottomed boxes, umbrellas, daily poured outtheir treasures to the lynx-eyed officers.

In Hay 1765, the lace-makers joined the procession of the silk-workers of Spitalfields to Westminster, bearing flags and banners.

* “ Gentleman’s Magazine."

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