Taking advantage of this omission, recourse was immediately had to the Spanish and Portuguese districts, and the consequence was an influx of the favorite herb at the old duty of 2d. The only real sufferers through adopting this new channel of commerce, were the planters of Virginia, who made a representation of their loss to the throne, when another law was passed, lessening the duty and prohibiting the importation from any other place.
To this effect an act was passed in 1624, and though it was some time previous to the trade regaining any thing like its pristine vigour, it had but just began to do so, when, as if the sight was doubly hateful to James, he had a new law passed. This was to the effect, that none, under very heavy penalties, should deal in the article without holding letters patent from himself. A blow so sudden and unexpected, occasioned the ruin, we are told, of many thousands, and the trade went rapidly to decay.
So uncertain and precarious did the law at this period seem with regard to tobacco, and so well was the irritable monarch’s antipathy to it known, by the celebrated “Counterblaste” he had written against it, of which we shall treat hereafter, that few cared to speculate in the traffic. Although the act James had made in 1620 was not repealed, the cultivation of the plant was still carried on clandestinely to a very great extent. Most of the laws, indeed, since James’s time, have an evident tendency to banish tobacco from the kingdom. An act was made 12th Car. II. cap. 34. This law, embracing the prohibitory portions of the preceding acts, confiscated the tobacco so found, with a fine of 100 shillings for every pole of land so planted.
Another shortly followed after this, the 15th Car. II. cap. 17, wherein the previous one was enforced, and the penalty fixed at 10l. for every rod. By this we may infer, that the former of these acts had not, in the estimation of the legislature, been sufficiently powerful to restrain the practice of the secret culture of the plant at home.
Turning aside from the perusal of these laws, which probably arose from the pique of a learned though imbecile monarch, we cannot but reflect with a feeling of surprise, that our own enlightened regulations have their origin distinctly traced to them. This is an assumption I think we may fairly maintain, when we state that the duty is now 3s.[10] per lb. on the importation of the raw material; a sum that forms no less than fifteen times its prime cost in the countries where it is produced. On the leaf manufactured it is immense, the duty on cigars being 9s. the lb. (5th Geo. IV. cap. 48,) and on snuff 6s.
That tobacco, as a luxury, is a fit article for taxation we are not disposed to deny, but a little reflection must convince any one, that a tax so exceedingly high, instead of adding to the revenue, can but have an opposite effect; for what can be a greater incentive to the contraband trade that is notoriously known to exist in this article of home consumption?
If the duty were lowered, the great cause of smuggling in this line would no longer remain, and at the same time a much greater quantity would doubtless be consumed. If we but look back in other instances of a similar kind, we shall generally find it so. The duty on spirits in Ireland and Scotland was decreased from 5s. 6d. the wine-gallon down so low as 2s., which instead of lowering the amount of the annual tax, very considerably added to it. Then again, in regard to the duty formerly levied on French wines, it was lowered from 11s. 5½d. down to 6s. the gallon, a reduction that also greatly tended to increase the amount of the year’s revenue. The duty on coffee is another proof we shall cite: in 1823 it was 1s. per lb. and the goverment derived from it that year 393,708l. Whereas when half of the amount levied was taken off, leaving it but 6d., in 1825 the gross receipt amounted to 426,187l. Thus may we see, with very numerous other instances that might be named, the advantages arising from a low tax, which we affirm, with few exceptions, will ever be found to benefit the country at large.
Nor is this the only evil we have to complain of as regards the tobacco regulations; while the whole system is defective, there is one that more imperatively calls for the attention of the legislature. What we allude to is, the glaring impolicy of obliging our merchant service to traverse different portions of the globe, at a consequently large expence, in search of an article we have the means of producing at home, and whose very production would furnish constant employment to some of the millions now a burthen to the country.
Perhaps it would scarcely be credited, that in 1826, no less a quantity of tobacco and snuff was imported than 40,074,447 lbs. Now out of this, only 18,761,245 lbs. paid duty; yet to the serious amount of 3,310,375l. sterling. The rest we suppose sought a market elsewhere.
As a proof of the evident want of policy in our regulations concerning tobacco, we shall give our readers a slight abstract to judge for themselves.