TOBACCO-PIPE CONTROVERSY.
A furious, and yet unappeased, controversy has lately raged in the newspapers, upon the question of the filthy nuisance of smoking tobacco—segars or pipe; and as in all other cases when men allow their passions to be heated by opposition, has run in great personalities between gentlemen who sign themselves Viator and Tabatiere. Whole columns of the newspapers have been occupied in discussing, in the first place, whether a man who smokes at all is a beast or not; and secondly, the argument has run into the comparative beastliness of smoking and snuffing. A future Hume, on looking over the journals, may thus sum up the merits of the case. About this period great hostilities arose between the advocates of segars and their opponents, which occupied the attention of thousands, who took a lively interest in the successful issue of the controversy. By the advocates for the practice it was urged with some plausibility of statement, that as to the pleasure of a segar, none but those who used them ought to express an opinion upon the point—that to appeal to experience, tobacco was in more universal use among nations than bread corn—that it had been known to stay the plague, and was the friend and companion of rich and poor. These statements were met with undisguised contempt, and it was retaliated, that the practice of using tobacco either by smoke or snuff, was a nuisance to others, thus infringing the very primary principles of civil liberty—that it led to drunkenness and debauch—that snuff spoiled the complexion—stopped the nose to the perception of odours—and that as to the ladies, they would positively spurn any approach of familiar friendship from a snuff-taker. This raised the concealed anger of the snuff-takers, who had hitherto maintained a stubborn neutrality while the argument was kept to smoke. They replied both by wit and invective—they affirmed snuff to have a moral use—"Dust to dust"—would remind them of the brevity of life—that the king and ministers patronized the habit, and gave away £10,000 worth of snuff-boxes in every year—that as to the nose being blockaded, that was a happy circumstance to London residents, and enabled them to acquire the French accent more naturally—that as to the assumed yellowness of complexion complained of, it was only studious and Werter-like—and that as to the ladies refusing to be saluted by snuff-takers, that was a thing which modesty and prudence required them to sneeze at. The historian might add by way of reflection, that nothing could more clearly show the national freedom from anxious cares, when it was thought that the public took interest in the comparative merits of blackened teeth or a snuffy pocket-handkerchief.—The Inspector.