CHAPTER V 



SOCIAL PROGRESS OF TOBACCO 



Widespread character of smoking — Culture forbidden in Eng- 

 land — Tobacco in Great Plague — Universality of smoking 

 at end of seventeenth century— French travellers on English 

 smoking — Children taught to smoke at school — Tobacco in 

 Parliament and church and councils — Heyday of smoking 

 under William III.— Extent of habit — DecUne in fashion — 

 Smoking degraded and snuflf exalted — 'Vulgar, not merely 

 vicious' — Degradation of practice — Introduction of cigars 

 led to renaissance of smoking early in nineteenth century — 

 Low status of practice sixty years ago — Increasing popu- 

 larity again — Forbidden by Wellington — Tobacco comes to 

 its own again after period of degradation — Its rapid in- 

 crease — Women and smoking — Smoking-carriages in trains 

 ordained 1868 — Causes of restoration. 



Under the Commonwealth tobacco assumed its true 

 and natural position in England. It had outgrown 

 its first phase as a terrifying novelty and pagan 

 practice, passed uninjured through the storm of 

 extravagant eulogy and direful warnings of its 

 medical friends and foes, and surviving the fantastic 

 admiration and fashionable abuse of the gallants of 

 James I., assumed its natural position among the 

 English people as a herb not lacking in medicinal 

 virtues, but the smoking whereof was a common, 



