SMUGGLING
The main illegal activity carried on in Cornwall at this time was smuggling, which had the support not merely of the 'lower orders' of society but also of many of their betters, including some whose official positions should have precluded such sympathies. There is in the County Record Office a book of extracts from the correspondence of the Penzance Custom House between 1738 and 1781, and though often dramatic, these are sometimes almost monotonous in the repeated complaints of the customs officers of the arrogance, ingenuity and audacity of the smugglers, and the impossibility of curbing them without fast ships at sea and military assistance on land. Smuggling in Penzance itself, though not unheard of, was comparatively rare, since this would have been under the eyes of the customs officers and of any naval and military assistance available to them; the 'trade' was particularly prevalent at Mousehole and at Porthleven, both of which were within the Penzance Customs Area, but every cove in Mount's Bay where a boat could land was a potential site for a 'run' of smuggled goods.
In 1749 the Penzance officers, Charles Vyvyan and George Mapowder, complained to their superiors in London:
The smugglers carry on here a greater trade and more openly run goods than ever, and now the officers here durst not do their duty without being knocked in the head, such are the vast number of smugglers that assemble together, and without an armed force it's but in vain to attempt them.
Nine years later, in 1758, the complaint was that "the Smuggling trade is carried on to such a height that they carry goods at noon day in defiance of the officers." On 4 December 1769 the chief officer at Penzance, George Scobell, wrote that the soldiers then quartered in the town were most useful, being a great terror to the smugglers and the only one on shore. He continued:
The Mayor of Penzance has always paid for fire and candles for the guard-room, but the present Mayor (Mr. Pender) refuses to. At this I do not wonder as he is at present bound over in a considerable sum not to be again guilty of smuggling.
Even in 18th-century Cornwall, this was not the conduct expected of the chief magistrate of a Chartered Borough, but one at least of the County Justices was a resolute enemy of smuggling. On 4 March 1778 Edward Giddy of Tredrea, St. Erth, brother of Thomas Giddy and father of Davies Gilbert, wrote as follows to an unnamed peer (possibly the Prime Minister, Lord North):
Smuggling since the soldiers have been drawn off has been carried on almost without control. Irish wherries carrying 14, 16 or more guns and well-manned frequently land many large quantities of goods in defiance of the officers of Customs and Excise, and their crews armed with swords and pistols escort the smugglers a considerable distance from the sea. The smugglers themselves, armed with offensive weapons and bidding defiance to all the opposition which the officers can make, carry their goods from one part of the country to another almost every night. About a fort-night since a large Wherry landed 1500 to 2000 ankers (9 and one-half gallons on an average) of spirit, about 20 tons of tea, and other kinds of smuggled goods, on a sandy beach in Mount's Bay between the towns of Penzance and Marazion, near a public road which, whilst the goods were discharging, was filled with armed men in order to keep every traveller in whom they could not confide, for a few hours till the goods were safely lodged in the country. A few days after, two officers got an information that a very considerable quantity of them was concealed in the house and premises of a well-known smuggler, obtained from me a search warrant, and were forcibly hindered from executing it by four men, one armed with a pistol and a large whip, the others with sticks or bludgeons, and were told that if they persisted they would have their brains blown out ... I fear a criminal prosecution would be useless at best, for a reason which it shocks me to mention, that a Cornish jury would certainly acquit the smugglers ... These are facts, it would be mere pedantry to attempt to describe the shocking effects, the moral and political consequences, of smuggling, carried to such a daring height, but I cannot help saying that perjury, drunkenness, idleness, poverty, contempt of the law and an universal corruption of manners, are in this neighbourhood too plainly seen to accompany it.
The Penzance officers admiltted, that what Giddy alleged was true, and further stated that in the previous November an Irish wherry had "come within the limits of the pier at this place, took out a vessel that was employed in the service of the Revenue and had just before taken a prize, carried her off, plundered her of all the goods she had seized, and then turned her adrift."
Smuggling continued to be widespread in the Mount's Bay area well into the 19th century, but gradually decreased, owing partly to the increased efficiency of the preventive service after the end of the war in 1815, and partly to the increasing growth of Methodism, smuggling being one of the many traditional Cornish activities of which John Wesley had not approved.

Source: The History of the Town & Borough of Penzance, by P.A.S. Pool.