"History proves that persecution never triumphs in its attempted eradications. Tobacco was so generally liked that no legislative measures could prevent its use."
At first the use of tobacco was confined to fops and the hangers on at ale houses and taverns but afterwards by the "chief men of the realm." Soon after the importation of the "durned weed" from Virginia the tobacco muse gave forth many a lay concerning the custom. The following verses describe the method of smoking then in vogue:
Nor did that time know
To puff and to blow
In a peece of white clay,
As they do at this day
With fier and coole,
And a leafe in a hole;
As my ghost hath late seen,
As I walked betwene
Westminister Hall
And the church of St. Paul,
And so thorow the citie
Where I saw and did pitty
My country men's cases,
With fiery-smoke faces,
Sucking and drinking
A filthie weede stinking,
Was ne'r known before
Till the devil and the More
In th' Indies did meete,
And each other there greete
With a health they desire,
Of stinke, smoke and fier.
But who e're doth abhorre it.
The citie smookes for it;
Now full of fier shop,
And fowle spitting chop,
So sneezing and coughing,
That my ghost fell to scoffing.
And to myself said:
Here's filthie fumes made;
Good phisicke of force
To cure a sicke horse.
The Puritans, from the first introduction of the plant, were sincere haters of tobacco, not only in England but in America. Cromwell had as strong a dislike of the plant as King James, and ordered the troopers to destroy the crops by trampling them under foot. Hutton describes a Puritan as one who
"Abhors a sattin suit, a velvet cloak,
And sayes tobacco is the Devill's smoke."
Probably no other plant has ever met with such powerful determined opposition, both against its use and cultivation, as the tobacco plant. It was strenuously opposed by all possible means, governmental, legislative, and literary. When tea and coffee were first introduced both were denounced in unmeasured terms, but the opposition was not so bitter or as lasting.
The following verses bearing the nom de plume of an "Old Salt," record much of the history of the plant:—
"Oh muse! grant me the power
(I have the will) to sing
How oft in lonely hour,
When storms would round me lower,
Tobacco's prov'd a King!
"Philanthropists, no doubt
With good intentions ripe,
Their dogmas may put out,
And arrogantly shout
The evils of the pipe.
"Kind moralists, with tracts,
Opinions fine may show:
Produce a thousand facts—
How ill tobacco acts
Man's system to o'erthrow.