superintend its execution, the "Chambre de Tabac," existed until the middle of the last century.*

Previous to the year 1604 the duty in England on tobacco was two pence the pound; but James, by proclamation, dated 17th October 1604, added a duty of six shillings and eight-pence the pound, "whereby it was likely that a less quantity might be brought."+

The style of this proclamation betrays its author: "Whereas tabacco, being a drugge of late yeares found out, and by merchants, as well denizens as strangers, brought from foreign partes in small quantitie into this realm of England, and other our dominions, was used and taken by the better sort both then and nowe onelie as phisicke to preserve healthe, and is nowe at this day, through evell custom and the tolleration thereof, excessivelie taken by a nomber of ryotous and disordered persons of mean and base condition, whoe, contrary to the use which persons of good calling and qualitye make thereof, doe spend most of theire tyme in that idle vanitie, to the evil example and corrupting of others, not caring at what price they buy that drugge, but rather devisinge how to add to it other mixture, therebye to make it the more delightfull to their taste, by which great and imoderate takinge of tabacco the health of a great nomber of our people is impayred, and theire bodies weakened and made unfit for labor, the estates of many mean persons so decayed and consumed as they are thereby driven to unthriftie shifts onelie to maynteyne their gluttonous exercise thereof," &c.

Not content with this mode of persecution, and with putting to death the great patron of tobacco, James commenced a clandestine warfare against the holy herb. To shew his contempt and abhorrence, he says, in his Apophthems, Were I to invite the devil to a dinner, he should have these three dishes: 1, a pig; 2, a poole of ling and mustard; 3, a pipe of tobacco." But his arguments are formally arrayed in his celebrated work called A Counterblaste to Tobacco.‡

His majesty begins by affirming that tobacco is a common herb, "growing, under divers names, almost every where," and first used by barbarous Indians as a "stinking and unsavourie antidote against a certain disease to which they were subject. "With the report of a great discovery for a conquest, some two or three sauage men were brought in, together with this sauage custome. But the pitie is, the poore wilde barbarous men died; but this vile barbarous custome is yet aliue." His majesty then proceeds to show cause against a rule derived from an aphorism in the phisickes," namely, that the brains being naturally cold and wet, all dry and hot things are good for them; by affirming that tobacco is not simply of a dry and hot quality, but "rather hath a certaine venomous facultie ioyned with the heat thereof," and that the suffumigation thereof being smoke and vapour, being humid, is easily resolved into water, "whereof there needs no other proofe but the meteors, which being bred of nothing else but of the vapours and exhalations sucked up by the sun, yet are the same smoaky vapours transformed into raines, snowes, deuwes, hoar frosts, and such like waterie meteors." As to the efficacy of tobacco in purging the head and stomach of rheums and distillations, he says, the fallacy of this argument appears by the description of the meteors: "for euen as the smoaky vapours sucked up by the sunne, and stayed in the lowest and cold region of the

Sinner's Voy. Hist. et Litt. dans Suisse Occid., quoted in Beckmann's Introduction to Technology. Rymer's Fœd. xvi, fol. 601.

Published anonymously, and republished by the Bishop of Winchester with other of King James' Works, fol. 1616.

the aire, are there contracted into cloudes, and turned into raine; so this stinking smoake being sucked up by the nose, and imprisoned in the cold and moyst braines, is by their cold and wet facultie turned and cast forth againe in waterie distillations, and so you are made free and purged of nothing but that wherewith you wilfully burthened yourselues." After observing that the smoke of Tobias' fish could smell no stronger or be more offensive to the devil than that of tobacco, he concludes by pronouncing the practice of inhaling it a custome loathsome to the eye, hatefull to the nose, harmfull to the braine, dangerous to the lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomlesse."

But even during James's life, some writers were not afraid to speak in behalf of this much abused herb. Thus Robert Harcourt, of Stanton Harcourt, in Oxon, Esq., in a relation of his voyage to Guiana in 1608, addressed to Prince Charles (who inherited his father's antipathy to tobacco) says of it, "Albeit some dislike, yet the generalitie of men in this kingdom doth with great affection entertaine it. It is not only in request in this our country of England, but also in Ireland, the Neatherlands, in all the easterly countreyes, and Germany, and most of all amongst the Turkes and in Barbary. The price it holdeth is great, the benefit our merchants gaine thereby is infinite, and the king's rent for the custome thereof is not a little. The tabacco that was brought into this kingdome in the yeare 1610, was, at the least, worth 60,000 pounds. And since that time the store that yearly hath come in was little lesse." He adds, "I dare presume to say, and hope to prove, that only this commoditie, tabacco, so much sought after and desired, will bring as great a benefite and profit to the undertakers as ever the Spaniards gained by the best and richest silver myne in all their Indies."

When Charles I. arrived from Scotland in 1633, he likewise thought fit to issue a proclamation, "to prevent abuses growing by the unordered retailing of tobacco;" wherein he observes, that the plant or drug was scarce known in former times, and brought at this time in small quantity as medicine, but has lately been taken for wantonness and excess to satisfy the inordinate appetite of a great number of men and women." He accordingly inhibited the retailing of tobacco, except by those who should be licensed for that purpose.*

A curious circumstance in the history of tobacco is, that it was the subject of one of the charges brought against the Earl of Strafford. The 12th article of impeachment against that nobleman was, "That he did import tobacco himself, and restrained others; forced the subjects to sell their commodity at low and under values, because they could not import it without license; and when himself had bought it at low rates, he sold it at excessive great rates; so that he hath made near £100,000 profit by his monopoly."

The evidence adduced in support of this charge discloses many curious particulars with respect to the traffic in tobacco in Ireland. Hence it would appear, that before Strafford's interference the custom on tobacco was threepence, and afterwards eighteen-pence the pound. That the price was formerly sixpence, and after the restraint upon the trade from two shillings to three shillings the pound. That the quantity consumed in Ireland was at least 500 tons, or 1,120,000 pounds weight, annually. And that Kinsale "is the port where, in a manner, all the tobacco of the kingdom comes to be landed."† Although the knowledge of this herb in Europe cannot be traced earlier than 1560, travellers in America were well acquainted with it previously, not merely

Rushworth's Coll., vol. ii, p. 191.

Tryal of Thomas, Earl of Strafford, in 1640-1641.

as

as a fumigatory, but as possessing medicinal properties. Romanus Pane, a Spanish monk, whom Columbus left in America, on his second departure from that country, became acquainted with this herb in St. Domingo, and is said to have published an account of it in 1496, under the names of cohobba or cozobba, and gioia.* Father D'Acosta, the Spanish jesuit, in that mass of nonsense and superstition called Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias,† describes the petum, or tobacco, as being used greatly as a medicine, and also for benumbing-plasters. Jean Lerius, a Frenchman, who was in Brazil with Mons. Villagagnon in 1557, gives the following account of a ceremony among the Caribbees where tobacco was used: "Further I observed, that with a very long cane wherein they put the herbe petum set a-fire, they often turned themselves hither and thither, and blew out of the fume of that herbe upon them that stood round about them with these words: 'Receive the spirit of fortitude, whereby you will overcome all your enemies.'"‡

It is extremely probable that the Indians were acquainted with some of the properties of this plant which we have not yet discovered; for many very credible authorities assert that its application in various ways, as a medicine, was very general and very successful among them. Mr. Boyle quotes Gulielmus Piso as his authority for affirming that the Indians cured wounds given over by European surgeons, with tobacco-juice: Oculatus itidem testis sum in nosocomiis relicta ulcera et gangrenas ab illis, vel solo succo tabaci, curata.

In process of time the cultivation of tobacco in England became common, and was the chief support of many towns, especially in the county of Gloucester; and there are many proclamations extant concerning this production, issued in the reigns of James I., Charles I., and Charles II.

But in the twelfth year of the last-mentioned sovereign, these places were reduced to absolute ruin, by a law prohibiting the planting, setting, or sowing of tobacco in England or Ireland: "In regard," says the preamble, "it is found by experience that the tobaccoes planted in these parts are not so good and wholesome to the takers thereof, and that by the planting thereof your Majesty is defrauded of a considerable part of your revenue of customs." It was therefore enacted that tobacco planted after 1st January 1660 should be "burnt, plucked up, torn in pieces, consumed, or utterly destroyed." The Hon. Daines Barrington observes of this law, that "it hath been most completely executed of any in the Statute Book."**

Respecting the qualities of tobacco, the writers of the olden time entertained great contrariety of opinion. Bacon says, "The use of tobacco has spread very wide in our time, and gives a secret delight to those who take it; insomuch that the persons once accustomed thereto find a difficulty to leave it off: and doubtless it contributes to alleviate fatigues, and discharge the body of weariness."++ Burton exclaims, "Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all their panaceas, potable gold, philosophers' stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases! A good vomit, I confess, a virtuous herb, if it be well qualified, opportunely taken, and medicinally used; but as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, 'tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands, health; hellish, devilish,

• Schlozerz, Briefwechsel, vol. iii, p. 156, quoted by Beckmann, ut supra. + Seville, 4to, 1590.

§ Works, vol. i, p. 498.

and

Purchas' Translation; Pilgrims, vol. iv, col. 1338.

I Fuller's Worthies, p. 349. The writer cautiously adds to his account of the places where it was cultivated, "as for the praise of tobacco, with the vertues thereof, they may be better performed by the pens of such writers whose pallates have tasted of the same."

tt Sylva Sylvarum.

and damned tobacco, the ruine and overthrow of body and soul."* Mr. Boyle recordst a case, furnished by a correspondent, of a suppression of urine cured by smoking tobacco; and another of stone removed by chewing it. It is added, by him, that Monk, the Duke of Albemarle, "recommends it for most kinds of diseases."

Were we to record the conflicting sentiments of modern medical writers upon the subjects of tobacco and smoking, we should plunge into an endless labyrinth. There is upon record one very remarkable and decisive evidence in favour of tobacco. In the year 1605, Sir Oliph Leagh sent some succours to his brother who was settled in South America; but the expedition in their land-journey was attacked by famine and disease, and found relief from both in tobacco. Five of the persons refused to partake of it, and died to a man.

If the concurrence of almost all nations (our own excepted), including both classes of society, can plead any thing in mitigation of the reproach which tobacco labours under in this country, the fact could easily be made out. In Spain, France, and Germany, in Holland, Sweden, Denmark, and Russia, the practice of smoking tobacco prevails amongst the rich and poor, the learned and the gay. In the United States of America smoking is often carried to an excess. It is not uncommon for boys to have a pipe or segar in the mouth during the greatest part of the day. The death of a child is not unfrequently recorded in American newspapers with the following remark subjoined: supposed to be occasioned by excessive smoking." If we pass to the East, we shall find the practice almost universal. In Turkey the pipe is perpetually in the mouth, and the most solemn conferences are generally concluded with a friendly pipe, employed like the calumet of peace amongst the Indians. In the East-Indies, not merely all classes, but both sexes, inhale the fragrant steam; the only distinction among them consisting in the shape of the instrument employed, and the species of the herb smoked. In China the habit equally prevails; and a modern traveller in that country (Barrow) states that every Chinese female from the age of eight or nine years wears, as an appendage to her dress, a small silken purse or pocket to hold tobacco, and a pipe, with the use of which many of them are not unacquainted at this tender age. This prevalence of the practice, at an early period, amongst the Chinese, is appealed to, by M. Pallas, as one evidence that "in Asia, and especially in China, the use of tobacco for smoking is more ancient than the discovery of the New World." He adds: “Among the Chinese, and amongst the Mongol tribes who had the most intercourse with them, the custom of smoking is so general, so frequent, and has become so indispensable a luxury; the tobaccopurse affixed to their belt so necessary an article of dress; the form of the pipes, from which the Dutch seem to have taken the model of theirs, so original; and lastly, the preparation of the yellow leaves, which are merely rubbed to pieces and then put into the pipe, so peculiar; that they could not possibly derive all this from America by way of Europe; especially as India, where the practice of smoking is not so general, intervenes between Persia and China."||

Anatomy of Melancholy, 1676, p. 235.

Works, vol. v, p. 528.

Ibid., p. 530.

§ The names of these resolute martyrs to prejudice were John Parkins, Edward Green, Thomas Stubbs, Andrew Swash, and an old man named John.

Prof. Beckmann, who reports this opinion, in his Introd. to Technology, adds a confirmatory opinion from Ulloa's Voyage to America, vol. i, p. 139.

CURSORY REMARKS ON COCHIN CHINA.*

DONGNAI, the southernmost province of Cochin China, and anciently an independent kingdom (then called Tsiompa) is a level champaign country, extremely fertile and well-watered by the river, the numerous branches and creeks of which intersect it in almost every direction. The city of Dongnai, now in ruins, the ancient capital of Cochin China, is situated on a large branch of the river, running in a south-easterly direction, distant about forty miles from Saigon, the modern capital of the province of Dongnai.

The port of Saigon is in latitude 10° 47′ N., and longitude 107° 5′ E.; it is from sixty-five to seventy miles distant from the sea, and stands on the banks of as fine a river as any, perhaps, in the world; easy of ingress and egress, free from any bar, and so deep that vessels of any size may anchor abreast of the town, and as near the shore as desired. The houses are rather low and mean, being, in fact, mere temporary dwellings; the streets are extensive and regular, planted with trees on each side. The fort, built by a French engineer, stands on an elevated spot a short distance from the river: it is extensive, and contains an arsenal and foundry, where brass and iron guns, mortars, shot, shells, &c. are made. A curious and destructive implement of war is also manufactured here, called by the natives, a fire-lance. It is a kind of rocket, used for the purpose of destroying vessels at sea, and discharged from a bamboo, three and a half or four feet long, bound firmly round with split ground rattan. When required to be used, they are fixed on the end of a musket or boarding pike; the fuse is attached to the outer end, and they throw, in regular succession, three or four balls of fire to the distance of 150 or 200 yards, with a report louder than that of a pistol; each interval allowing sufficient time to take aim at the object: the fire is inextinguishable, and adheres to whatever substance it comes into contact with.* The manufacture of these lances is conducted with great secresy.

Saigon Proper, or, as the natives pronounce it, Thaï Gōne, is situated up a smaller branch of the river, about eight or ten miles N.W. from Ben Nghe, or Saigon, the chief port of commerce. It is of considerable size, and built mostly of brick: here the principal merchants of the country reside.

The Portuguese of Macao traded exclusively to this port for many years previous to 1800, when an English ship arriving here from Madras, their jealousy was so much alarmed that they addressed a letter to the governor of Saigon, stating that they considered themselves in gratitude bound to apprize his Cochin Chinese Majesty of the great danger that must be incurred by the admission of British vessels into any of his ports, assuring him that they came under pretence of commerce only to obtain a knowledge of the country, in order to facilitate its intended conquest, and on this occasion mentioned our possessions in India. The King's eldest son was at that time governor of Dongnai; he took little notice of this representation; it clearly appearing to him that the authors were actuated solely by interested motives, as they could bring no proofs of what they asserted, and in their crossexamination in council contradicted each other.

This

From the notes of a person who traded for upwards of seven years with that country, viz. from 1800 to 1807. The author (Mr. Purefoy) has transmitted to us, these, his personal observations, owing to his "having observed several misrepresentations in a late publication relative to Cochin China."

† It would be extremely curious to analyze the composition of these weapons, could a sample be procured. The writer of these remarks obtained 150 lances for the protection of his ship against the Malays.-Ed.