ATTACKED BY JAMES I. 83 



the pleasures of the world make men loath to leave 

 them, they are for the most part so inchanted with 

 them : and further, besides all this, It is like hell in 

 the very substance of it, for it is a stinking loathsome 

 thing ; and so is hell. And further, his majesty pro- 

 fessed that, were he to invite the devil to dinner, he 

 should have three dishes ; 1. A pig ; 2. A pole of ling 

 and mustard ; and 3. A pipe of tobacco for digesture." 

 King James had the power not only to write viciously 

 but to act strongly ; and he it was who first imposed a 

 heavy tax on tobacco. " However absurd his reason- 

 ing may appear, it unfortunately happened that he 

 possessed the power to reduce his aversion to practice, 

 and he may be considered as the author of that 

 unwarrantable persecution of the tobacco plant, which, 

 under varying circumstances, has been injudiciously 

 continued to the present time."* The importation 

 duty was originally twopence per pound. James at 

 once raised it to the monstrous sum of six shillings 

 and ten pence. The animus -which affected his weak 

 mind bursts forth in the preamble of his Act, against 

 what he is pleased to term an "evil vanitie;" by which, 

 he adds " the health of a great number of people is 

 impayred, and their bodies weakened, and made unfit 

 for labour, and the estates of many mean persons so 

 decayed and consumed, as they are thereby driven to 

 unthriftie shiftes only to maintain their gluttonous 

 exercise thereof." f 



* Brodigan's Treatise on the Tobacco Plant, 1S30. 

 f He gives one instance of the luxurious use of the herb by those "not 



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