There is evidence to show that in 1832 it was successfully grown in Roxburghshire, where 1000 pounds an acre was obtained. The land was let at about £5 to £6 per acre. Experiments of recent years have also proved very encouraging, and in fact it is difficult to see how any reasonable doubt can exist as to the fact that it would be perfectly easy to grow plenty of that sort of tobacco which we now obtain from Holland and Germany. A prominent Irish statesman has admitted this: "There was no doubt but that tobacco could be grown in Ireland, but whether there are Irishmen patriotic enough to smoke it, is very doubtful."[58]
Of course every one knows that the differences in tobacco depend chiefly on the preparation, but the Constitutional objection to tobacco, illustrated by the above remark, is the real reason why it is not grown.
Oliver Cromwell sent his troopers to ride down the growing crops. Charles II imposed a penalty of £1600 per acre. Modern statesmen are flippant and unfair.
The reason of course is that a large income is cheaply obtained by taxing imported tobacco. If this were at all interfered with, new taxes, which would certainly be unpopular, would be required.
There is a good deal of interest in the story of the tobacco plantations. Many prisoners of the Civil War in England were sold to Virginia and other places. Even nowadays there is some romance in the history of a cigar. In the Dutch island of Sumatra the jungle is cleared away by the natives under the orders of an English manager. Chinese coolies are then imported. The estate provides each coolie with tools, tea, a barber, and sufficient cash to buy rice, fish, or pork, as well as a little over for his opium, to spend in fireworks, and to propitiate his demons.
The coolie grows the tobacco, which is bought from him and manufactured by the estate. Some of it goes to India, where it is used as the outer wrapper of cigars.[59]
For adulterating tobacco all sorts of leaves are occasionally employed, such as those of the dock, chicory, burdock, foxglove, comfrey, elm, coltsfoot, plantain, beech, cabbage, lettuce (steeped in tar oil), etc., etc.
The substance nicotine is a deadly and dangerous poison. When young people smoke tobacco, it has been quite conclusively proved that they will very probably not reach their full growth, but be miserable weaklings, stunted, half-developed, and below the proper standard of a man.
This is not surprising, if one reflects on the constitution of tobacco smoke. This contains "nicotine, empyreumatic resin, oil, ammonia, carbonic acid, carbonic oxide, hydrocyanic acid, sulphuretted hydrogen, carburetted hydrogen, and paraffin."[60]