“The question of growing tobacco in the United Kingdom is not so simple as patriotic Irishmen and enthusiasts of acclimatization might think. Tobacco has been classed, like tea and coffee, as among those necessaries of life which could not be grown with any advantage in the United Kingdom, and might therefore be freely taxed for revenue purposes. It is, indeed, true that a passable herb may be grown and called tobacco, in many parts of the United Kingdom, but the fact has been generally recognized that competition with more tropical countries is practically fruitless, and therefore to be abandoned. It is easily to be understood that so aromatic a crop, monopolizing so many of the best and rarest qualities of the soil, would require high manuring; and that, just as is the case of any other crop—such as hops, or even wheat—one could get nothing of the special excellence of the herb required but what one has previously put into the soil. But, to be profitable, the plant requires good heat as well as good soil. This, therefore, is the whole economical question, and upon that the matter mainly hinges. The claim to grow real tobacco in England or Ireland is based upon the allegation that the herb can be grown at a profit. The best evidence furnished to the House of Commons on Monday evening on this point was that of Lord Harris, who affirmed boldly that Ireland and parts of England were prepared to enter into a fair competition with the recognized productive colonies. The Government, and with them, Lord Iddesleigh, are in favour of an experiment largely granting all that is asked, and carefully observing the result. Then, when the British tobacco comes upon the ordinary market, let it be taxed as any other similar product would be. The Government could not view with anything but dismay the prospect of a fall in revenue; and there is no question, therefore, that the home-grown tobacco must pay duty to the full. The _crux_ of the question is how such duty can be enforced without an army of revenue officers, whose practical duties would bear no reasonable proportion to their probable cost. Our own impression is that tobacco can never be grown in these islands on any large scale to compete with the growers within the tropics, and that the expense of collecting revenue would be out of all proportion to the amount collected. At the same time, it ill becomes us as a Free-trading nation to shut out any class of our own countrymen, by duties distinctly prohibitive, from following a branch of agriculture which they think they could make profitable. It is against our principle to offer a bounty on the forced cultivation of exotics, such as tobacco undoubtedly is when grown in these islands, but it would be still worse to maintain, on merely pedantic grounds, a prohibitive import on a crop which many men think the smaller tenants could produce to the great advantage of their holdings. We are by no means sanguine of their success; but that is no