Our readers may perhaps remember, that we gave them a short account of this book, with a letter extracted from it in Novem. 1756. The author then sent us an injunction to forbear his work till a second edition should appear: this prohibition was rather too magisterial; for an author is no longer the sole master of a book which he has given to the public;2 yet he has been punctually obeyed; we had no desire to offend him, and if his character may be estimated by his book, he is a man whose failings may well be pardoned for his virtues.

The second edition is now sent into the world, “corrected and enlarged,” and yielded up by the author to the attacks of criticism. But he shall find in us no malignity of censure. We wish indeed, that among other corrections he had submitted his pages to the inspection of a grammarian, that the elegancies of one line might not have been disgraced by the improprieties of another; but with us to mean wella is a degree of merit which over-balances much greater errors than impurity of stile.

We have already given in our collections, one of the letters, in which Mr. Hanway endeavours to show, that the consumption of tea, is injurious to the interest of our country.3 We shall now endeavour to follow him regularly through all his observations on this modern luxury; but it can scarcely be candid, not to make a previous declaration, that he is to expect little justice from the author of this extract, a hardened and shameless tea-drinker, who has for twenty years diluted his meals with only the infusion of this fascinating plant, whose kettle has scarcely time to cool, who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnights, and with tea welcomes the morning.4

He begins, by refuting a popular notion, that bohea and green tea are leaves of the same shrub, gathered at different times of the year. He is of opinion, that they are produced by different shrubs.5 The leaves of tea are gathered in dry weather; then dried and curled over the fire in copper pans.6 The Chinese use little green tea, imagining that it hinders digestion and excites fevers.7 How it should have either effect is not easily discovered, and if we consider the innumerable prejudices which prevail concerning our own plants, we shall very little regard these opinions of the Chinese vulgar, which experience does not confirm.

When the Chinese drink tea, they infuse it slightly, and extract only the more volatile parts, but though this seems to require great quantities at a time, yet the author believes, perhaps only because he has an inclination to believe it, that the English and Dutch use more than all the inhabitants of that extensive empire. The Chinese drink it sometimes with acids, seldom with sugar; and this practice, our author, who has no intention to find any thing right at home, recommends to his countrymen.

The history of the rise and progress of tea-drinking is truly curious.8 Tea was first imported from Holland by the earls of Arlington and Ossory in 1666: from their ladies the women of quality learned its use. Its price was then three pounds a pound, and continued the same to 1707. In 1715, we began to use green tea, and the practice of drinking it descended to the lower class of the people. In 1720, the French began to send it hither by a clandestine commerce. From 1717 to 1726, we imported annually seven hundred thousand pounds. From 1732 to 1742, a million and two hundred thousand pounds were every year brought to London; in some years afterwards three millions, and in 1755, near four millions of pounds, or two thousand tuns, in which we are not to reckon that which is surreptitiously introduced, which perhaps is nearly as much. Such quantities are indeed sufficient to alarm us; it is at least worth enquiry, to know what are the qualities of such a plant, and what the consequences of such a trade.

He then proceeds to enumerate the mischiefs of tea, and seems willing to charge upon it every mischief that he can find. He begins however, by questioning the virtues ascribed to it, and denies that the crews of the Chinese ships are preserved in their voyage homewards from the scurvy by tea.9 About this report I have made some enquiry, and though I cannot find that these crews are wholly exempt from scorbutic maladies;1 they seem to suffer them less than other mariners in any course of equal length. This I ascribe to the tea, not as possessing any medicinal qualities, but as tempting them to drink more water, to dilute their salt food more copiously, and perhaps to forbear punch, or other strong liquors.

He then proceeds in the pathetic strain, to tell the ladies how, by drinking tea they injure their health, and, what is yet more dear, their beauty.

To what can we ascribe the numerous complaints which prevail? how many sweet creatures of your sex, languish with a weak digestion, low spirits, lassitudes, melancholy, and twenty disorders, which in spite of the faculty have yet no names, except the general one of “nervous complaints”? let them change their diet, and among other articles leave off drinking tea, it is more than probable the greatest part of them will be restored to health.2

Hot water is also very hurtful to the teeth. The Chinese do not drink their tea so hot as we do, and yet they have bad teeth. This cannot be ascribed entirely to sugar, for they use very little, as already observed: but we all know that hot or cold things which pain the teeth, destroy them also. If we drank less tea, and used gentle acids for the gums and teeth, particularly sour oranges, though we had a less number of French dentists, I fancy this essential part of beauty would be much better preserved.3

The women in the united provinces who sip tea from morning till night, are also as remarkable for bad teeth. They also look pallid, and many are troubled with certain feminine disorders arising from a relaxed habit.4 The Portuguese ladies, on the other hand, entertain with sweet-meats, and yet they have very good teeth: but their food in general is more of the farinaceous and vegetable kind than ours. They also drink cold water instead of sipping hot, and never taste any fermented liquors; for these reasons the use of sugar, does not seem to be at all pernicious to them.5

Men seem to have lost their stature, and comeliness; and women their beauty. I am not young, but methinks there is not quite so much beauty in this land as there was. Your very chambermaids have lost their bloom, I suppose by sipping tea. Even the agitations of the passions at cards are not so great enemies to female charms. What Shakespeare ascribes to the concealment of love, is in this age more frequently occasioned by the use of tea.6

To raise the fright still higher, he quotes an account of a pig’s tail scalded with tea, on which however he does not much insist.7

Of these dreadful effects, some are perhaps imaginary, and some may have another cause. That there is less beauty in the present race of females, than in those who entered the world with us, all of us are inclined to think on whom beauty has ceased to smile; but our fathers and grand-fathers made the same complaint before us, and our posterity will still find beauties irresistibly powerful.

That the diseases commonly called nervous, tremours, fits, habitual depression, and all the maladies which proceed from laxity and debility, are more frequent than in any former time, is, I believe, true, however deplorable. But this new race of evils, will not be expelled by the prohibition of tea. This general languor is the effect of general luxury, of general idleness. If it be most to be found among tea drinkers, the reason is, that tea is one of the stated amusements of the idle and luxurious. The whole mode of life is changed, every kind of voluntary labour, every exercise that strengthened the nerves, and hardened the muscles, is fallen into disuse. The inhabitants are crowded together in populous cities, so that no occasion of life requires much motion; every one is near to all that he wants; and the rich and delicate seldom pass from one street to another, but in carriages of pleasure. Yet we eat and drink, or strive to eat and drink like the hunters and huntresses, the farmers and the housewives of the former generation, and they that pass ten hours in bed and eight at cards, and the greater part of the other six at the table, are taught to impute to tea, all the diseases which a life unnatural in all its parts, may chance to bring upon them.

Tea, among the greater part of those who use it most, is drunk in no great quantity. As it neither exhilerates the heart, nor stimulates the palate; it is commonly an entertainment merely nominal, a pretence for assembling to prattle, for interrupting business or diversifying idleness. They who drink one cup, and who drink twenty, are equally punctual in preparing or partaking it; and indeed, there are few but discover by their indifference about it, that they are brought together not by the tea, but the tea table. Three cups make the common quantity, so slightly impregnated, that perhaps they might be tinged with the Athenian cicuta,8 and produce less effects than those letters charge upon tea.

Our author proceeds to shew yet other bad qualities of this hated leaf.

He afterwards quotes Paulli to prove, that tea is a “desiccative, and ought not to be used after the fortieth year.”3 I have then long exceeded the limits of permission, but I comfort myself, that all the enemies of tea cannot be in the right. If tea be desiccative according to Paulli, it cannot weaken the fibres, as our author imagines; if it be emetic, it must constringe4 the stomach, rather than relax it.

The formidable quality of tinging the knife, it has in common with acorns, the bark, and leaves of oak, and every astringent bark or leaf, the copperas which is given to the tea, is really in the knife. Ink may be made of any ferrugineous5 matter and astringent vegetable, as it is generally made of galls and copperas.

From tea the writer digresses to spirituous liquors, about which he will have no controversy with the Literary Magazine, we shall therefore insert almost his whole letter,6 and add to it one testimony, that the mischiefs arising on every side from this compendious mode of drunkenness, are enormous and insupportable; equally to be found among the great and the mean; filling palaces with disquiet and distraction, harder to be born, as it cannot be mentioned; and overwhelming multitudes with incurable diseases and unpitied poverty.

Desperate diseases require desperate remedies: if laws are rigidly executed against murderers in the highway, those who provide a draught of gin, which we see is murderous, ought not to be countenanced. I am now informed, that in certain hospitals, where the number of the sick used to be about 5600 in 14 years,

From 1704, to 1718, they increased to} 8189.

From 1718, to 1734, still augmented to} 12710.

And from 1734, to 1749, multiplied to} 38147.

What a dreadful spectre does this exhibit! nor must we wonder when satisfactory evidence was given before the great council of the nation, that near eight millions of gallons of distilled spirits, at the standard it is commonly reduced to for drinking, was actually consumed annually in drams! the shocking difference in the numbers of the sick, and we may presume of the dead also, was supposed to keep pace with gin: and the most ingenious and unprejudiced physicians ascribed it to this cause. What is to be done under these melancholy circumstances? shall we still countenance the distillery, for the sake of the revenue; out of tenderness to the few who will suffer by its being abolished; for fear of the madness of the people; or that foreigners will run it in upon us? there can be no evil so great as that we now suffer, except the making the same consumption, and paying for it to foreigners in money, which I hope never will be the case.

As to the revenue, it certainly may be replaced by taxes upon the necessaries of life, even upon the bread we eat, or in other words, upon the land, which is the great source of supply to the public, and to individuals. Nor can I persuade myself, but that the people may be weaned from the habit of poisoning themselves. The difficulty of smugling a bulky liquid, joined to the severity which ought to be exercised towards smuglers, whose illegal commerce is of so infernal a nature, must, in time, produce the effect desired. Spirituous liquors being abolished, instead of having the most undisciplined and abandoned poor, we might soon boast a race of men, temperate, religious, and industrious, even to a proverb. We should soon see the ponderous burden of the poors-rate decrease, and the beauty and strength of the land rejuvinate. Schools, workhouses and hospitals, might then be sufficient to clear our streets of distress and misery, which never will be the case whilst the love of poison prevails, and the means of ruin, is sold in above one thousand houses in the city of London, in two thousand two hundred in Westminster, and one thousand nine hundred and thirty in Holborn and St. Giles’s.

But if other uses still demand liquid fire, I would really propose, that it should be sold only in quart bottles, sealed up with the king’s seal, with a very high duty, and none sold without being mixed with a strong emetic.

Many become objects of charity by their intemperance, and this excludes others who are such by the unavoidable accidents of life; or who cannot by any means support themselves. Hence it appears, that the introducing new habits of life, is the most substantial charity: and that the regulation of charity-schools, hospitals and workhouses, nor the augmentation of their number, can make them answer the wise ends for which they were instituted.

The children of beggars should be also taken from them, and bred up to labour, as children of the public. Thus the distressed might be relieved, at a sixth part of the present expence; the idle be compelled to work, or starve; and the mad be sent to Bedlam. We should not see human nature disgraced by the aged, the maimed, the sickly, and young children, begging their bread, nor would compassion be abused by those who have reduced it to an art to catch the unwary. Nothing is wanting but common sense and honesty in the execution of laws.

To prevent such abuse in the streets, seems more practicable than to abolish bad habits within doors, where greater numbers perish. We see in many familiar instances the fatal effects of example. The careless spending of time among servants, who are charged with the care of infants, is often fatal: the nurse frequently destroys the child! the poor infant being left neglected, expires whilst she is sipping her tea! this may appear to you as rank prejudice, or jest; but I am assured, from the most indubitable evidence, that many very extraordinary cases of this kind, have really happened among those whose duty does not permit of such kind of habits.

It is partly from such causes, that nurses of the children of the public often forget themselves, and become impatient when infants cry: the next step to this, is using extraordinary means to quiet them. I have already mentioned the term “killing nurse,” as known in some workhouses: Venice treacle, Poppey water, and Godfrey’s cordial,8 have been the kind instruments of lulling the child to his everlasting rest. If these pious women could send up an ejaculation9 when the child expired, all was well, and no questions asked by the superiors. An ingenious friend of mine informs me, that this has been so often the case, in some workhouses, that Venice treacle has acquired the appellation of “the Lord have mercy upon me,” in allusion to the nurses hackneyed expression of pretended grief when infants expire! Farewel.

I know not upon what observation Mr. Hanway founds his confidence in the governors of the Foundling Hospital, men of whom I have not any knowledge, but whom I intreat to consider a little the minds as well as bodies of the children. I am inclined to believe irreligion equally pernicious with gin and tea, and therefore think it not unseasonable to mention, that when a few months ago I wandered through the hospital, I found not a child that seemed to have heard of his creed or the commandments. To breed up children in this manner, is to rescue them from an early grave, that they may find employment for the gibbet; from dying in innocence, that they may perish by their crimes.

Having considered the effects of tea upon the health of the drinker, which, I think, he has aggravated in the vehemence of his zeal, and which, after I solicitedb them by this watery luxury, year after year, I have not yet felt; he proceeds to examine how it may be shewn to affect our interest; and first calculates the national loss by the time spent in drinking tea. I have no desire to appear captious, and shall therefore readily admit, that tea is a liquor not proper for the lower classes of the people, as it supplies no strength to labour, or relief to disease, but gratifies the taste without nourishing the body. It is a barren superfluity, to which those who can hardly procure what nature requires, cannot prudently habituate themselves. Its proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence. That time is lost in this insipid entertainment, cannot be denied; many trifle away at the tea-table, those moments which would be better spent; but that any national detriment can be inferred from this waste of time, does not evidently appear, because I know not that any work remains undone for want of hands. Our manufactures seem to be limited, not by the possibility of work, but by the possibility of sale.

His next argument is more clear. He affirms, that one hundred and fifty thousand pounds in silver are paid to the Chinese annually, for three millions of pounds of tea, and that for two millions more brought clandestinely from the neighbouring coasts, we pay at twenty-pence a pound, one hundred sixty-six thousand six hundred and sixty-six pounds.1 The author justly conceives, that this computation will waken us; for, says he, “The loss of health, the loss of time, the injury of morals, are not very sensibly felt by some, who are alarmed when you talk of the loss of money.”2 But he excuses the East-India company, as men not obliged to be political arithmeticians, or to enquire so much what the nation loses, as how themselves may grow rich.3 It is certain, that they who drink tea, have no right to complain of those that import it,4 but if Mr. Hanway’s computation be just, the importation and the use of it ought at once to be stopped by a penal law.

The author allows one slight argument in favour of tea, which, in my opinion, might be with far greater justice urged, both against that, and many other parts of our naval trade. “The tea trade employs,” he tells us, “six ships, and five or six hundred seamen sent annually to China. It likewise brings in a revenue of three hundred and sixty thousand pounds, which, as a tax on luxury, may be considered as of great utility to the state.”5 The utility of this tax I cannot find; a tax on luxury is no better than another tax, unless it hinders luxury, which cannot be said of the impost upon tea, while it is thus used by the great and the mean, the rich and the poor. The truth is, that by the loss of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, we procure the means of shifting three hundred and sixty thousand at best, only from one hand to another; but perhaps, sometimes into hands, by which it is not very honestly employed. Of the five or six hundred seamen sent to China, I am told, that sometimes half, commonly a third part perish in the voyage; so that instead of setting this navigation against the inconveniencies already alleged, we may add to them, the yearly loss of two hundred men in the prime of life, and reckon, that the trade to China has destroyed ten thousand men since the beginning of this century.

If tea be thus pernicious, if it impoverishes our country, if it raises temptation, and gives opportunity to illicit commerce, which I have always looked on as one of the strongest evidences of the inefficacy of our law, the weakness of our government, and the corruption of our people, let us at once resolve to prohibit it for ever.

Our riches would be much better employed to these purposes, but if this project does not please, let us first resolve to save our money, and we shall afterwards very easily find ways to spend it.