INDICTED AND TRIED. 241 



republic, and that non-smoking men are hardly 

 ever found in political conventions, of what avail 

 would be petitions to Congress ? 



A writer in the Independent remarks : ff Those 

 whom we esteem and love share in the indulgence. 

 Our theological seminaries are scarcely cleaner 

 than our colleges . . . and as for the lawyers and 

 politicians, one is under suspicion of being ascetic, 

 mean, or somehow unfinished, if he does not 

 smoke. We know of some districts where a man 

 could not be elected to Congress if it were thor- 

 oughly known that he disapproved of the use of 

 tobacco in any form." 



A strong indication of the prevalent feeling is 

 contained in the Report, December 1884, of Hugh 

 McCulloch, Secretary of the Treasury. Here is a 

 passage : — 



"An article which is so generally used as tobacco, 

 and which adds so much to the comfort of the large 

 numbers of our population who earn their living 

 by manual labor, cannot properly be considered 

 a luxury, and as the collection of the tax is ex- 

 pensive and troublesome to the Government, and 

 is especially obnoxious and irritative to small 

 manufacturers, the tax upon tobacco should, in my 

 judgment, be removed." 



In view of such a proposal from so high a source 

 — a proposal that entirely ignores moral consider- 

 ations — we might well despair, did we not know 

 that, in the days of our fathers, whiskey was not- 

 regarded as a luxury, but as a necessary of life, 



