158 ST NICOTINE 



the World written when the death sentence had been 

 passed upon him and all his hopes of life had fled, are 

 considered to be the finest and grandest example of prose 

 in the English language. That Raleigh would not sur- 

 render his natural nobility of character to flatter the most 

 abject monarch* that ever sat on the throne is to his ever- 

 lasting honour, and marks him as a typical Englishman. 



Through the medium of the notorious Star Chamber, the 

 King, in 1614, directed his efforts ostensibly to restrain the 

 consumption of tobacco ; in effect, to put an end to the 

 infant colony of Virginia. For this purpose a bill was 

 drawn up, addressed to ' Our Right Trustie and right well 

 beloved Cousin and Counsellor, Thomas, Earle of Dorset, 

 our High Treasurer of Englande, Greeting.' Then follows 

 a rather perplexing, verbose preamble, the drift of which 

 seems to be the hatching up of excuses for heaping upon 

 tobacco a monstrous load of taxation for the avowed 

 purpose of relieving ' many mean persons ' of the heavy 

 expense the habit of smoking entailed. 



He tells his ' loving subjects ' that smoking is an ' evil 

 vanitie, whereby the health of a great number of people is 

 impayered, 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 onley to maintain their gluttonous exercise thereof.' 

 After further admonition and warning of evils in store for 

 the obdurate, the Act proceeds : ' We do therefore will 



*It is difficult to speak of James I. in measured terms. The 

 reader is referred to Sir Anthony Weldon's Co^<.rl and Character 

 of King James (Smeeton's reprint, 1817). Raumer, ii. p. 200, 

 says of James : ' He was a slave to vices which could not fail to 

 make him an object of disgust.' Also, Winwood's Memorials. 



