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 Although the act James had made in 1620 was not repealed, the cultivation of the plant was still carried on clandestinely to a very great extent.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 10_l._ 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 3_s._[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 9_s._ the lb. (5th Geo. IV. cap. 48,) and on snuff 6_s._ 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?