1811 James Madison - Smuggling British Goods in Passamaquoddy Bay

In the Northeast, near Passamaquoddy, small lakes and river towns emerged as smuggling centers during the embargo and non-intercourse years.   These towns were just miles from British territory in Ontario and had easy access to the St. Lawrence River and Lake Ontario.   Madison's secretary of Treasury Albert Gallatin tried to increase border enforcement and appointed Hart Massey to established customhouses along the border.   The smuggler's still gained the upper-hand, yet this did not deter Madison and Gallatin from ordering Massy to enforce the Non-Importation Act of 1811.   Immediately, Passamaquoddy posed a significant problem, such brazen smuggling of British goods from Canada was impossible to stop.   A very common technique used by these smugglers was to list their goods as a quantity of "Plaster of Paris" or as fertilizer.   In a letter to James Madison, Albert Gallatin explained how this was accomplished:  "Masters of vessels bound from a port of the United States, to another port of the United States enter on their manifest, certified by the Collector of the port of departure, a quantity of Plaister of Paris or other foreign articles not actually shipped at the time. They afterwards receive, either at Passamaquoddy, at some port of a foreign Colony adjacent to the United States, or at sea from another vessel, prohibited articles answering the description in the manifest, and then proceed to the port of destination, where the fraud is covered by the entry on the manifest."

Madison was furious.   The smuggling of British  goods was undermining his foreign policy and destroying any chance that the the non-intercourse had in forcing Great Britain to change it's ways.  It was in this context, that President James Madison took the opportunity in his 1811 annual address to defend the Non-intercourse acts.  Madison argued, that Congress needed to turn their attention away from repealing the non-intercourse act, and towards the "expediency of further guards against evasions and infractions of our commercial laws."   It was this odious practice of smuggling, that Madison called a fraud committed not only against the state, but against every individual of America.  Madison said that it reached it's "utmost guilt" when it blended with a "pursuit of ignomious gain" (public shame) that conflicts with the foreign policy of our own nation. In other words, the problem was not the law, but rather the law-breakers. Thus, Madison concluded that it was the smuggler's who deserve the indignation and criticism of the public, not the non-intercourse act. 

"Under another aspect of our situation the early attention of Congress will be due to the expediency of further guards against evasions and infractions of our commercial laws. The practice of smuggling, which is odious everywhere, and particularly criminal in free governments, where, the laws being made by all for the good of all, a fraud is committed on every individual as well as on the state, attains its utmost guilt when it blends with a pursuit of ignominious gain a treacherous subserviency, in the transgressors, to a foreign policy adverse to that of their own country. It is them that the virtuous indignation of the public should be enabled to manifest itself through the regular animadversions of the most competent laws."

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29453
http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/03-03-02-0567
The Creation of the American State:  Customhouses, law, and commerce in the age of revolution, Volume one by Gautham Rao (Chicago 2008) pages 410-411