lion pounds, and the imperial exchequer is thereby enriched
eighty-six million francs _per annum_. Not only is the poor man thus
obliged to pay an excessive price, but the tobacco furnished him is of
a much inferior quality to ours. "_Petit-caporal_" smoking-tobacco, the
delight of the middling classes of Paris, hardly suits an American's
taste. In Italy more than one _pubblicano_ has enriched himself and
bought nobility by farming the public revenues from tobacco and salt. In
Austria the cigars are detestable, though Hungary grows good tobacco,
and its Turkish border furnishes some of the meerschaum clay. German
smoking-tobaccoes are favorites with students here, but owe their
excellence to their mode of manufacture.

Tobacco, according to some authorities, holds the next place to salt,
as the article most universally and largely used by man,--we mean,
of course, apart from cereals and meats. It is unquestionably the
widest-used narcotic. Opium takes the second rank, and hemp the third;
but the opium--and hashish-eaters usually add the free smoking of
tobacco to their other indulgences.

From these great columns of consumption we may logically deduce two
prime points for our argument.

1st. That an article so widely used must possess some peculiar quality
producing _a desirable effect_.

2d. That an article so widely used cannot produce _any marked
deleterious effect_.

For it must meet some instinctive craving of the human being,--as bread
and salt meet his absolute needs,--to be so widely sought after and
consumed. Fashion does not rule this habit, but it is equally grateful
to the savage and the sage. And it cannot be so ruinous to body and mind
as some reformers assert; otherwise, in the natural progress of causes
and effects, whole nations must have already been extinguished under
its use. Many mighty nations have used it for centuries, and show no
aggregated deterioration from its employment. Individual exceptions
exist in every community. They arise either from idiosyncrasy or from
excess, and they have no weight in the argument.

Now, what are these qualities and these effects? We can best answer the
first part of the question by a quotation.

"In ministering fully to his natural wants and cravings, man passes
through three successive stages.

"First, the necessities of his material nature are provided for. Beef
and bread represent the means by which, in every country, this end is
attained. And among