sir francis drake first brought tobacco to england about 1586. it owed the greater part of its early popularity, however, to the praise and practice of raleigh: his high standing and character would have sufficed to introduce still more novel customs. the weed once inhaled, the habit once acquired, its seductions would not allow it to be easily laid aside; and we accordingly find that royal satire, public odium, and ruinous cost were alike inadequate to restrain its rapidly increasing consumption. somewhere about the year 1600 or 1601 tobacco was carried to the east, and introduced among the turks and persians,it is not known by whom: the devotion of modern mussulmans might reasonably ascribe it to allah himself. it seems almost incredible that the oriental type of life and character could have existed without tobacco. the pipe seems as inseparable as the koran from the follower of mahomet. barely three centuries ago, then, the first seeds of the _nicotiana tabacum_ germinated in european soil: now, who shall count the harvests? less than three centuries ago, raleigh attracted a crowd by sitting smoking at his door: now, the humblest bog-trotter of ireland must be poor indeed who cannot own or borrow a pipe. a little more than a century and a half ago, the import into great britain was only one hundred and twenty thousand pounds, and part of that was reëxported: now, the imports reach thirty million pounds, and furnish to government a revenue of twenty millions of dollars,being an annual tax of three shillings four pence on every soul in the united kingdom. nor is the case of england an exceptional one. the tobacco-zone girdles the globe. from the equator, through fifty degrees of latitude, it grows and is consumed on every continent. on every sea it is carried and used by the mariners of every nation. its incense rises in every clime, as from one vast altar dedicated to its worship,before which ancient holocausts, the smoke of burnt-offerings in the old jewish rites, the censers of the church, and the joss-sticks of the east, must pale their ineffectual fires. all classes, all ages, in all climates, and in some countries both sexes, use tobacco to dispel heat, to resist cold, to soothe to reverie, or to arouse the brain, according to their national habitations, peculiarities, or habits. this is not the language of hyperbole. with a partial exception in favor of the hop, tobacco is the _sole recognized narcotic_ of civilization. opium and hemp, if indulged in, are concealed, by the western nations: public opinion, public morality, are at war with them. not so with tobacco, which the majority of civilized men use, and the minority rather deprecate than denounce. we shall avail ourselves of some statistics and computations, which we find ready-calculated, at various sources, to support these assertions. the following are the amounts of tobacco consumed _per head_ in various countries: in great britain, 17 ounces per head; in france, 18 1/2 ounces,three-eighths of this quantity being used in the form of snuff; in denmark, 70 ounces (4 1/2 lbs.) per head; and in belgium, 73 1/2 ounces per head;in new south wales, where there are no duties, by official returns, 14 pounds per head. we doubt if these quantities much exceed the european average, particularly of germany and turkey in europe. in some of the states of north america the proportion is much larger, while among eastern nations, where there are no duties, it is believed to be greater still. the average for the whole human race of one thousand millions has been reasonably set at seventy ounces per head; which gives a total produce and consumption of tobacco of two millions of tons, or 4,480,000,000 of pounds! at eight hundred pounds an acre, this would require five and a half million acres of rich land to be kept constantly under tobacco-cultivation. the whole amount of wheat consumed by the inhabitants of great britain weighs only four and one-third million tons. the reader can draw his own inferences. the united states are among the largest producers of tobacco, furnishing one-twentieth of the estimated production of the whole world. according to the last census, we raised in 1850 about two hundred million pounds. all the states, with five exceptions,and two of these are utah and minnesota,shared, in various degrees, in the growth of this great staple. confining our attention to those which raised a million of pounds and upwards, we find connecticut and indiana cited at one million each; ohio and north carolina, at ten to twelve millions; missouri, tennessee, and maryland, from seventeen to twenty-one millions; kentucky and virginia, about fifty-six million pounds. of this gross two hundred million pounds, we export one hundred and twenty-two millions, leaving about seventy-eight millions for home consumption. not satisfied with the quality of this modest amount, we import also, from cuba, turkey, germany, etc., about four million pounds, in havana and manila cigars and turkish and german manufactured smoking-tobacco. thus we increase the total of our consumption to eighty-two million pounds, which gives about three pounds eight ounces to every inhabitant of the united states, against seventeen ounces in england, and eighteen ounces in france. from 1840 to 1850, the consumption in the united states, per head, increased from two pounds and half an ounce to three pounds eight ounces. here, we buy our tobacco at a fair profit to the producer. in most of the countries of europe it is either subject to a high tax, or made a government monopoly, both as regards its cultivation, and its manufacture and sale. france consumes about forty-one million pounds, and the imperial exchequer is thereby enriched eighty-six million francs _per annum_. not only is the poor man thus obliged to pay an excessive price, but the tobacco furnished him is of a much inferior quality to ours. _petit-caporal_ smoking-tobacco, the delight of the middling classes of paris, hardly suits an americans taste. in italy more than one _pubblicano_ has enriched himself and bought nobility by farming the public revenues from tobacco and salt. in austria the cigars are detestable, though hungary grows good tobacco, and its turkish border furnishes some of the meerschaum clay. german smoking-tobaccoes are favorites with students here, but owe their excellence to their mode of manufacture. tobacco, according to some authorities, holds the next place to salt, as the article most universally and largely used by man,we mean, of course, apart from cereals and meats. it is unquestionably the widest-used narcotic. opium takes the second rank, and hemp the third; but the opiumand hashish-eaters usually add the free smoking of tobacco to their other indulgences. from these great columns of consumption we may logically deduce two prime points for our argument. 1st. that an article so widely used must possess some peculiar quality producing _a desirable effect_. 2d