The progress of this famous plant has been something like the progress of Truth, suspected at first, though very palatable to those who had the courage to taste it, resisted as it encroached, and abused as its use spread, but establishing its triumph at last in cheering the world, from palace to cottage, by the resistless effect of time and its own virtues only; becoming a beverage appreciated by all, as well as an agent of progress and civilization. TEA AND AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE. Although Tea may be claimed to be in all its associations eminently peaceful, growing as it does on the hill-sides of one of the most peaceful countries in the world, coming to us through the peace-promoting ways of commerce, until it reaches its ultimate destination, that centre of peace—the family table—and like peaceful sleep, “knitting up the raveled sleeve of care,” yet it has been the occasion of several wars and political problems, the latest of which is the precipitation of the great Chinese exodus, which at present threatens such vital results, not only to our own country, but possibly to the world at large. It was destined—as in all social and political affairs, the greatest and most important events are curiously linked with the smallest and most insignificant—to be the final crisis of the American Revolutionary movement. Think of it! _The birth of the greatest nation of all time due to a three-penny tax on tea!_ It was the article chosen above all others to emphasize the principles that “_all men are born free and equal_,” and that “_taxation without representation is tyranny_,” and for the establishment of which principles a war was fought, that when judged by the law of results, proves to have been the most important and fruitful recorded on history’s pages. Who, in looking back over the long range of events conserving to create our now great country, can fail to have his attention attracted to what has been termed, with a characteristic touch of American humor, “The Boston Tea Party of 1773”? Who could have then predicted the marvelous change that a single century of free government would have wrought? Who could have dreamed that Tea would have proved such an important factor in such a grand result? What a lesson to despotic governments! A dreary November evening; a pier crowded with excited citizens; a few ships in the harbor bearing a hated cargo—hated not of itself, but for the principles involved; on the decks a mere handful of young men—a few leaders in Israel—urged on by the fiery prescience of genius, constituting themselves an advance guard to lead the people from out the labyrinth of Remonstrance into the wilderness of Revolution.