He afterwards quotes Paulli, to prove, that tea is a "desiccative, and
ought not to be used after the fortieth year." I have, then, long
exceeded the limits of permission, but I comfort myself, that all the
enemies of tea cannot be in the right. If tea be a desiccative,
according to Paulli, it cannot weaken the fibres, as our author
imagines; if it be emetick, it must constringe the stomach, rather than
relax it.

The formidable quality of tinging the knife, it has in common with
acorns, the bark, and leaves of oak, and every astringent bark or leaf:
the copperas, which is given to the tea, is really in the knife. Ink may
be made of any ferruginous matter, and astringent vegetable, as it is
generally made of galls and copperas.

From tea, the writer digresses to spirituous liquors, about which he
will have no controversy with the Literary Magazine; we shall,
therefore, insert almost his whole letter, and add to it one testimony,
that the mischiefs arising, on every side, from this compendious mode of
drunkenness, are enormous and insupportable; equally to be found among
the great and the mean; filling palaces with disquiet, and distraction,
harder to be borne, as it cannot be mentioned; and overwhelming
multitudes with incurable diseases, and unpitied poverty.

"Though tea and gin have spread their baneful influence over this
island, and his majesty's other dominions, yet, you may be well assured,
that the governors of the Foundling Hospital will exert their utmost
skill and vigilance, to prevent the children, under their care, from
being poisoned, or enervated by one or the other. This, however, is not
the case of workhouses: it is well known, to the shame of those who are
charged with the care of them, that gin has been too often permitted to
enter their gates;--and the debauched appetites of the people, who
inhabit these houses, has been urged as a reason for it.

"Desperate diseases require desperate remedies: if laws are rigidly
executed against murderers in the highway, those who provide a draught
of gin, which we see is murderous, ought not to be countenanced. I am
now informed, that in certain hospitals, where the number of the sick
used to be about 5600 in 14 years,

From 1704 to 1718, they increased to 8189;
From 1718 to 1734, still augmented to 12,710;
And from 1734 to 1749, multiplied to 38,147.

"What a dreadful spectre does this exhibit! nor must we wonder, when
satisfactory evidence was give