He next pays a high tribute to the Oriental method of smoking, and assures the reader that the pleasures of Eastern society are considerably enhanced by the use of the pipe, adding, ‘It affords the peasant, too, a cheap and sober refreshment, and probably often restrains him from less innocent indulgences.’ Mr. Layard and Mr. Crawfurd, whose large experience of Eastern peoples is known to the world, have each recorded his opinion to the effect that the use of tobacco has contributed very much towards the present sobriety of Asiatics. The presence of an array of witnesses such as these to the power of the pipe to subdue the savage breast naturally suggests the thought of a new field of operations for its use. That laudable organisation, the Peace Society, which seeks to combat man’s militant instincts by such persuasions as fall short of the shillelagh, ought certainly to find in the Indian’s peace-pipe with a well-filled tobacco-pouch a coadjutor for the propagation of its amiable doctrines; at any rate, a pioneer that would prepare the soil for the seed and the advent of the millennium. Lord Clarendon, when Minister of Foreign Affairs, used to excuse his room reeking with the fumes of tobacco by declaring that diplomacy itself was a mere question of the judicious application of tobacco between opposing plenipotentiaries. The pipe, indeed, has always been recognised as a good diplomatist. If you want time to consider well before committing yourself to an answer you find that the pipe won’t draw, though you puff and puff; then, having gained time and cleared your thoughts, the pipe mends, a cloud is formed, and out of chaos comes light, and now you are ready with your argument, though you may begin with, ‘your pardon, friend, but what were we talking about?’ If diplomacy can be soothed and led out of thorny paths into pleasant ways, then assuredly a useful career awaits the weed in the House, where the magic of its suasive breath would subdue a bellicose Parliament into easy complaisance, and so confer an inestimable blessing on a weary Legislature.