pleasure. Yet we eat and drink, or strive to eat and drink, like the hunters and huntresses, the farmers and the housewives of the former generation; and they that pass ten hours in bed, and eight at cards, and the greater part of the other six at the table, are taught to impute to Tea all the diseases which a life unnatural in all its parts may chance to bring upon them.

Tea, among the greater part of those who use it most, is drunk in no great quantity. As it neither exhilarates the heart, nor stimulates the palate, it is commonly an entertainment merely nominal, a pretence for assembling to prattle, for interrupting business, or diversifying idleness. They who drink one cup, and who drink twenty, are equally punctual in preparing or partaking it; and indeed there are few but discover by their indifference about it, that they are brought together not by the Tea, but the Tea-table. Three cups make the common quantity, so slightly impregnated, that perhaps they might be tinged with the Athenian cicuta, and produce less effects than these • Letters charge upon Tea.

Our author proceeds to shew yet other bad lities of this hated leaf.

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"Green Tea, when made strong even by infusion, "is an emetick; nay, I am told it is used as such in "China; a decoction ofit certainly performs this ope"ration: yet by long use it is drank by many with"out such an effect. The infusion also when it is "made strong, and stands long to draw the gross"er particles, will convulse the bowels: even in "the manner commonly used, it has this effect on some constitutions, as I have already remarked to you from my own experience,

"You see I confess my weakness without rea serve; but those who are very fond of Tea, if "their digestion is weak, and they find themselves "disordered, they generally ascribe it to any cause 66 except the true one. I am aware that the effect "just mentioned is imputed to the hot water; let "it be so, and my argument is still good: but "who pretends to say it is not partly owing to "particular kinds of Tea? perhaps such as partake "of copperas, which there is cause to apprehend "is sometimes the case: if we judge from the "manner in which it is said to be cured, together "with its ordinary effects, there is some founda"tion for this opinion. Put a drop of strong Tea, "either Green or Bohea, but chiefly the former, on "the blade of a knife, though it is not corrosive in "the same manner as vitriol, yet there appears to "be a corrosive quality in it, very different from "that of fruit which stains the knife."

He afterwards quotes Paulli to prove that Tea is a desiccative, and ought not to be used after the for tieth year. I have then long exceeded the limits of permission, but I comfort myself, that all the ene mies of Tea cannot be in the right. If Tea be 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 cop➡ peras which is given to the Tea, is really in the knife. Ink may be made of any ferrugineous 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 dsiquiet and distraction; harder to be borne as it cannot be mentioned; and overwhelming multitudes with incurable diseases and unpitied poverty.

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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 poison❝ed, or enervated by one or the other. "however, is not the case of workhouses: it is "well known, to the shame of those who are char"ged with the care of them, that gin has been too "often permitted to enter their gates; and the de"bauched appetites of the people who inhabit these "houses has been urged as a reason for it.

This,

"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 coun"tenanced. I am now informed, that in certain hos66 pitals, where the number of the sick used to be "about 5,600 in 14 years,

"From 1704 to 1718, they increased to 8,189; "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 given before the great council of the nation, that

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near eight millions of gallons of distilled spirits, "at the standard it is commonly reduced to for drinking, was actually consumed annually in "drams! the shocking difference in the numbers of "the sick, and we may presume of the dead also, "was supposed to keep pace with gin: and the most ingenious and unprejudiced physicians ascribed "it to this cause. What is to be done under these "melancholy circumstances? shall we still countenance the distillery, for the sake of the revenue; "out of tenderness to the few who will suffer by "its being abolished; for fear of the madness of "the people; or that foreigners will run it in upon "us? There can be no evil so great as that we

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now suffer, except the making the same con"sumption, and paying for it to foreigners in mo66 ney, which I hope never will be the case

"As to the revenue, it certainly may be replaced "by taxes upon the necessaries of life, even upon "the bread we eat, or in other words, upon the "land, which is the great source of supply to the

publick and to individuals. Nor can I persuade "myself, but that the people may be weaned from "the habit of poisoning themselves. The diffi"culty of smuggling a bulky liquid, joined to the

severity which ought to be exercised towards "smugglers, whose illegal commerce is of so infer"nal a nature, must in time produce the effect de"sired. Spirituous liquors being abolished, instead "of having the most undisciplined and abandoned

poor, we might soon boast a race of men, temperate,

"religious, and industrious even to a proverb. "We should soon see the ponderous burden of the "poor's rate decrease, and the beauty and strength "of the land rejuvenate. Schools, workhouses, "and hospitals, might then be sufficient to clear "our streets of distress and misery, which never "will be the case whilst the love of poison pre"vails, and the means of ruin is sold in above one "thousand houses in the city of London, two "thousand two hundred in Westminster, and one "thousand nine hundred and thirty in Holborn "and St Giles'.

"But if other uses still demand liquid fire, I "would really propose, that it should be sold only "in quart bottles, sealed up with the King's seal, "with a very high duty, and none sold without "being mixed with a strong emetick.

"Many become objects of charity by their in"temperance, and this excludes others who are such "by the unavoidable accidents of life, or who can"not by any means support themselves. Hence "it appears, that the introducing new habits of life "is the most substantial charity; and that the re"gulation of charity-schools, hospitals, and work"houses, not the augmentation of their number, can make them answer the wise ends for which "they were instituted.

"The children of beggars should be also taken "from them, and bred up to labour, as children of "the publick. Thus the distressed might be re"lieved, at a sixth part of the present expense; the "idle be compelled to work or starve; and the mad "be sent to Bedlam. We should not see human "nature disgraced by the aged, the maimed, the