In 1785, the Government boldly repealed the Excise duty; and imposed only a Customs’ duty of 12½ per cent. The consumption of tea was doubled in the first year after the change, and quadrupled in the third. The system was too good to last. The concession of three years in which the public might freely use an article of comfort was quite enough for official liberality and wisdom. New duties were imposed in 1787; the consumption was again driven back, and by additional duty upon duty, was kept far behind the increase of the population for another thirty years. In 1784, the annual consumption was only 4,948,983 lbs.; in 1787, with a reduced duty, it was 17,047,054 lbs.; in 1807, when we had almost reached the climax of high duties, it was only 19,239,212 lbs. This state of things, with very slight alteration, continued till the peace. The consumption had been nearly stationary for thirty years, with a duty raised from 12½ per cent. to 96 per cent. Those were the days, which some of us may remember, when we paid 12_s._ a pound for our green tea, and 8_s._ for our black; the days when convictions for the sale of spurious tea were of constant occurrence; and yet the days when Cobbett was alarmed lest tea should become a common beverage, and calculated that between eleven and twelve pounds a year were consumed by a cottager’s family in tea-drinking. During this fourth epoch of excessive taxation, the habit of tea-drinking had become so rooted in the people, that no efforts of the Government could destroy it. The teas under 2_s._ 6_d._ a pound (the Company’s warehouse prices without duty), were the teas of the working classes—the teas of the cottage and the kitchen. In 1801, such teas paid only an excise of 15 per cent.; in 1803, they paid 60 per cent.; in 1806, 90 per cent. And yet the washerwoman looked to her afternoon ‘dish of tea,’ as something that might make her comfortable after her twelve hours’ labour; and balancing her saucer on a tripod of three fingers, breathed a joy beyond utterance as she cooled the draught. The factory workman then looked forward to the singing of the kettle, as some compensation for the din of the spindle. Tea had found its way even to the hearth of the agricultural labourer. He ‘had lost his rye teeth’—to use his own expression for his preference of wheaten bread—and he would have his ounce of tea as well as the best of his neighbours. Sad stuff the chandler’s shop furnished him: no commodity brought hundreds of miles from the interior of China, chiefly by human labour; shipped according to the most expensive arrangements; sold under a limited competition at the dearest rate; and taxed as highly as its wholesale cost. The small tea-dealers had their manufactured tea. But they had also their smuggled tea. The pound of tea which sold for eight shillings in England, was selling at Hamburg for fourteenpence. It was hard indeed if the artisan did not occasionally