Tobacco in English Social Life 73 



this failing by denouncing the ungodly pipes of 

 the Cavaliers, which attack the Royalists answered 

 by satirizing those who thrust pepper up their 

 noses. 



In America the early English settlers found com- 

 fort in their privations and hardships in the smoke of 

 tobacco. Virginia, the first English colony, may be 

 said to have been literally established on tobacco. 

 Its culture was its chief and almost only occupation ; 

 so much so that it came to be considered as money. 

 The stipends of ministers were paid in tobacco. Any 

 ship's captain carrying a Quaker into Virginia was 

 fined 5,000 pounds of tobacco, and the same quantity 

 was the penalty extorted from any planter who 

 sheltered a Friend. The early settlers needed wives, 

 and to supply them cargoes of young women were 

 shipped from England. From these the colonists 

 chose wives, paying 120 pounds of tobacco, not for 

 the woman, but for the expense of her passage. It 

 is scarcely credible, but a fact, that modern anti- 

 tobacconists have educed this incident as a proof of 

 the vicious and depraving character of tobacco, whereas 

 nothing could have been more natural and innocent. 

 In new colonies money takes various forms, and there 

 is always a minority of women. The emigration of 

 women to Australia might as truly be regarded as an 

 instance of the depravity of sheep-rearing or gold- 

 mining. 



As late as the eighteenth century contributions to 

 churches in the American colonies were made in 

 tobacco. The vestry-book of Hampton, Virginia, 

 shows that the expenses of the church from 1723 to 



