As customs officials were granted more and more power to extinguish illicit trade, inevitably they began to abuse it. Often they actually made their money as a percentage of the value of the goods they confiscated, putting them in the same position as pirates, but with the entire force of the British Crown behind them. (It’s not so different from today’s police departments funding their budgets through civil forfeiture.) Abuse and corruption were widespread, and as enforcement ratcheted up, so did colonial hatred of the men doing the enforcing.
