intoxication, by smoking and chewing, under the names of Haschish and Bang. Several writers of great authority have however contended that the practice of smoking tobacco was known in India before the discovery of America.
Its use in America, as we learn from Humboldt, is very ancient, and its cultivation by the natives of one district at least, viz., the banks of the Oronoko, dated far back from the time of the European invasion; and if the cigar is entitled to the character it generally has, of being the most refined mode of using the weed, the use of tobacco cannot boast many improvements since its introduction, for Columbus found the natives of Cuba smoking cigars in 1492, when he landed on their coast; and to this day they can fairly challenge the whole world with “real Havannas.”
The forms under which tobacco enters into commerce are more numerous than many will suppose. In the simplest form, that is, when it appears only as dried leaves, it has really undergone a degree of manufacture; for, like the hay of our meadows and the tea of China, it must when gathered be carefully dried, and during the drying process must be laid in heaps so as to heat or pass through a slight degree of fermentation, which is absolutely necessary to develop its flavour. The tobacco of Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky, which forms by far the greatest portion of that consumed in this country, consists of the leaves tied simply at their stalks in bunches, called hands, or of parts of the leaves with the stalks and midribs removed. In this state it is technically called “strips,” and is much used by the cigar manufacturers. Both kinds are packed in large casks, holding when filled and pressed tightly as much as half a ton weight or more, and of these casks so filled, in prosperous times, we receive about 80,000 per annum, the duty on which is 3s. per pound, with an addition of 5 per cent.
Besides this vast quantity, the Americans send us the two kinds of manufactured tobacco known as Cavendish and Negrohead, so much coveted by smokers and chewers. The former of these is in flat cakes, usually about ten inches in length, three inches broad, and half an inch thick, usually of a black colour, but in the finer kinds of a light yellowish brown. These cakes consist of strips of the leaves freed from the midrib and larger veins, placed carefully in a layer, and pressed very hard with a press, after they have been moistened with molasses or liquorice juice dissolved in water; some of the finer sorts are said to be prepared with honey, and hence the term honey-dew applied to the lighter kinds. The Negrohead is in small sticks usually made by twisting one or two strands together like a rope, and then flattening by pressure. These are always black, and are inferior in quality to the Cavendish.
Hitherto, although large quantities of these varieties of manufactured tobacco have been brought to this country, the high rate of duty, 9s. per pound, with the addition of 5 per cent., has prevented any appreciable quantity being duty paid. It has therefore been landed on our shores only for the purpose of being re-shipped either for use at sea by sailors and others, or for foreign countries whose regulations admit of its use. Another difficulty prevented its consumption in this country openly, namely, an excise regulation which prohibits any tobacco containing more than a certain per-centage of saccharine matter from being sold; hence, as all foreign manufactured tobacco of these two kinds contain more than the allowed quantity, that law was a prohibition. Notwithstanding this, however, very large quantities of both kinds undoubtedly are smuggled continually.
Mr. Gladstone now proposes to allow British manufacturers to make Cavendish and Negrohead, under the supervision of the Revenue Department, in bonded warehouses, and to use so much saccharine matter as will enable them to compete with the American manufacturers. The provisions of the Bill are however so clumsy that it seems scarcely possible they can ever be practically applied, and the expense of carrying them out bids fair to exceed any advantages likely to arise. Why should not the raw material be handed over to the manufacturer to do as he likes with it when he has paid the duty? If he thinks proper to adulterate it, let the laws be enforced against him. Science would render detection easy, and conviction certain; and free trade would be fairly carried out in this as in other articles. Why treat the tobacco merchants, the sugar merchants, and the coffee or tea merchants differently? The first class pays, it is true, nearly six millions sterling to the revenue, but this ought not to mark it out for such restrictive legislation more than the others, for the sugar duties amount to a still larger sum: they were last year on all kinds nearly six millions and a half; tea and coffee together paid six millions within a fraction: now sugar may be adulterated with sand, tea with sloe leaves, and coffee with chicory and a host of other rubbish. It is difficult, then, to see why all cannot be treated on the same general principles.
Besides those varieties of tobacco which are sent from the American States, we have from South America leaf tobacco from Paraguay and other places, several kinds of roll tobacco, as the Varinas-roll, and the curious Amazonas-roll, made up into cylindrical sticks from four to ten feet in length, and pointed at each end, rarely exceeding in the middle three inches in diameter. These rolls are neatly covered with cane, derived from some species of palm, and frequently bright small red and yellow feathers are worked in with the cane, so that the whole represents a decorated cudgel. Indeed, this resemblance is so complete, that a number of them sent from Brazil to the Italian Exhibition in 1861 were mistaken for weapons, and were labelled “Weapons of war from the natives of the banks of the Amazon.” This kind is very rare and costly, and is said to be the finest manufactured tobacco in the world. Since 1851, Turkey has sent large quantities of a small yellow leaf-tobacco, which is said to be derived from the species known botanically as Nicotiana rustica; it is mild-flavoured, and has become a favourite with smokers in England. The Germans, also, send us a small quantity, but of an inferior quality; the principal use of the German tobacco is to form the covering of cigars; but for this purpose none is
