Before the Indian weed so strongly was embrac’t,
Wherein such mighty summes we prodigally waste.
In this love of the weed, and the extravagant sums expended upon it, is to be found the key to Robert Burton’s high praise and vigorous condemnation, uttered in one breath, of tobacco. As an example of Elizabethan nervous vigour the passage is worth quoting:
Tobacco! divine, rare, super-excellent tobacco! which goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher’s stones; a sovereign remedy to all diseases; a virtuous herb, if it be well qualified, opportunely taken, and medicinally used; but as it is commonly abused by most men, who take it as tinkers do ale, ’tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purge of goods, lands, health, hellish, devilish, and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul.
Democritus Junior did not mince matters, either in writing or when indulging in lusty banter with bargemen on the Thames.
Of more vital importance than the price paid for it is the consideration of its effects on health and character, and, if we would view the subjects in its larger bearings, on our physical and moral organisation it is obviously necessary that we should
Survey the whole nor seek slight faults to find
Where nature moves, and rapture charms the mind.
At the outset, however, it cannot be too strongly emphasised that there is no question as to the baneful action of tobacco in any form on growing youths. Until the age of adolescence is safely passed, or till the riper age of one and twenty has been attained, there should be no thought of smoking. The tests and experiments of physiologists, the untrained observation of laymen, and the accumulated experience of civilised nations are agreed in this conclusion. Remarks pointing to the rapid growth of the smoking habit among youths were made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his recent Budget speech, where, commenting upon the augmented revenue from tobacco, he said it was mainly due to the vast consumption of cigarettes, which were specially attractive to our youthful population. ‘I am told,’ Sir Michael added, ‘of one manufacturer who makes two millions of cigarettes a day who hardly made any a few years ago.’
Every-day observation bears out the statement that the cigarette is the chosen smoke of youths. Go where we will, in crowded streets or country lanes, boys of the tender age of from nine or ten years upwards are almost constantly met with, smoking paper cigarettes, who were they better advised would prefer toffy, as was the case a few years ago. Surely every one knows that children cannot go on smoking tobacco with impunity, without, in fact, doing themselves life-long injury. Since parents are too heedless of their children’s welfare to prevent them from pursuing a practice the inevitable results of which will, by-and-by, appear in stunted, weakly growth and the train of evil which follow on deranged nerve-tissue, it would seem to be no more than humane that the Legislature should step in and prohibit the sale of tobacco in any form to children under the age of say, sixteen. Already some of the states of North America have instituted penal enactments for the protection of children against the indulgence, which to them is pernicious.