130 tobacco: its use and ABtJSE. 



families, and ^ the totality of the street/ and is now d la 

 mode with all classes. As you are aware, the Emperor 

 and Empress both smoke. If they had not a taste for 

 tobacco, they might still indulge in, or rather subject 

 themselves to its use, by way of setting an example, 

 which his majesty has strong politico-economical reasons 

 for wishing to see generally imitated. Between 1839 

 and 1854, the consumption of tobacco in all France 

 nearly doubled in quantity. "Whatever may be the 

 vicious effect of the noxious weed on the popular health, 

 this increased consumption helps to plump up the gov- 

 ernment finances curiously. The manufacture and sale 

 of tobacco is, as my readers are aware, a State monopoly; 

 but they are, perhaps, not aware of what M. Husson 

 assures us is the fact, that it produces a clear yearly 

 profit {Un^Jice net,) of more than 100,000,000 of 

 francs, or one-fifteenth of all the receipts of the public 

 treasury." 



138. In the Lancet for 14th March, 1857, page 250, 

 Mr. Higginbottom quotes Sir David Brewster's memoir 

 of Sir Isaac Newton, wherein he states : 



^* He was frugal in his diet, and in all his habits tem- 

 perate. Whep he was asked to take snufi" or tobacco, 

 lie declined, remarking ^-that he would make no necessi- 

 ties to himself' — a remark," says Mr. Higginbottom, 

 " truly worthy of that great jAilosopher and Christian." 

 My reasons for introducing the above are, that in many 

 of the letters in the Lancet, on the tobacco controversy, 

 the name of Sir Isaac Newton has been brought forward 

 unwarrantably, by the advocates of the innocence of to- 

 bacco, to prove that that great mind was uninjured by 



