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"Many persons either do not, or pretend not to, know what teapotism is. In consequence of this ignorance or affectation we shall, in a few words, try to describe the leading features of the male and female teapot. Teapotism is a magnificent profession, but a very sorry practice! It professes a large-hearted liberality, unbounded piety, and the enunciation of true principles; but its practice is that of a narrow-minded clique, who condemn all who go not with them. Its piety consists in hero-worship and the circulation of illiterate tracts, calculated to attract the strong and to confound the weak; it is bounded on the north by the platform and meeting-house, and on the south by scandal, hassocks and tea, whence the name of teapots, &c."

Tea-parties have always been popular institutions among Dissenting bodies, and it is therefore not surprising to find ministers taking part in meetings advocating a reduction of the tea duties. In 1848 the Rev. Dr. Hume, attending a meeting in Liverpool for this purpose, warmly defended tea, on the ground of health, and quoted with great satisfaction the evidence of Dr. Sigmond, given before the Committee of the House of Commons. Asked what had been the result of the medical inquiries into the effect of tea upon the human frame, Doctor Sigmond replied, "I think it is of great importance in the prevention of skin disease, in comparison with any fluid we have been in the habit of drinking in former years, and also in removing glandular affections. I think scrofula has very much diminished in this country since tea has been so largely used. To those classes of society who are not of labouring habits, but who are of sedentary habits, and exercise the mind a good deal, tea is of great importance."

On the other hand, a famous physician of our time takes an entirely opposite view of the question. At the Sanitary Congress last year Dr. Richardson delivered an address on "Felicity as a Sanitary Research," and charged tea with being a promoter of infelicity. "As a rule," he says, "all agents which stimulate--that is to say, relax--the arterial tension, and so allow the blood a freer course through the organs, promote for a time felicity, but in the reaction leave depression. The alkaloid in tea, theine, has this effect. It causes a short and slight felicity. It causes in a large number of persons a long and severe and even painful sadness. There are many who never knew a day of felicity, owing to this one destroying cause. In our poorer districts, amongst the poor women of our industrial populations, our spinning, our stocking-weaving women, the misery incident to their lot is often doubled by this one agent."

The Dean of Bangor is the latest clerical opponent of tea-drinking. Speaking at a meeting held to further the establishment of courses of instruction in practical cookery in the elementary schools, he said that if he had his own way there would be much less tea-drinking among people of all classes. Oatmeal and milk produced strong, hearty, good-tempered men and women; whereas excessive tea-drinking created a generation of nervous, discontented people, who were for ever complaining of the existing order of the universe, scolding their neighbours, and sighing after the impossible. Good cooking would, he firmly believed, enable them to take far higher and more correct views of existence. In fact, he suspected that too much tea-drinking, by destroying the calmness of the nerves, was acting as a dangerous revolutionary force among us. Tea-drinking, renewed three or four times a day, made men and women feel weak, and the result was that the tea-kettle went before the gin-bottle, and the physical and nervous weakness, that had its origin in the bad cookery of an ignorant wife, ended in ruin, intemperance, and disease.

The worthy Dean's denunciation of tea-drinking formed the subject of numerous leading articles in the press, followed by letters from correspondents, several of whom referred to the difficulty of finding any satisfactory substitute for the fragrant and refreshing beverage which, during the present century; has come to be regarded almost as a necessary of life in English homes, both rich and poor. One gentleman pathetically describes his feelings on being presented one afternoon in a drawing-room, where he had been in the habit of being served with "at least three cups of supernatural tea," with "a glass brimful of a dim, opaque, greyish-white liquid," which turned out to be cold barley-water.

The latest medical contribution to the literature of the question is a lecture on "Coffee and Tea," by Dr. Poore, Vice-Chairman of the Council of the Parkes Museum, given at the Parkes Museum on the 6th of December, 1883. He thus describes the good and bad effects of these luxuries:--

The question of the action of tea, as well as of tobacco and other stimulants, has occupied the attention of Professor Mantegazza, an Italian physiologist of high repute. This eminent scholar places tea amongst the nervous foods; and his enthusiasm for it is unbounded. He credits it with the power of dispelling weariness and lessening the annoyances of life. He considers it the greatest friend to the man of letters, enabling him to work without fatigue; an aid to conversation, rendering it pleasant and easy. His own experience of tea is, that it revives drooping intellectual activity; and he regards it the best stimulus to exertion. "Without its aid," he says, "I should be idle." His general conclusions are that it is beneficial to adults, but injurious to children; and he pronounces it one of the greatest blessings of Providence.

Whatever may be urged in favour of tea, it is undeniable that excess is injurious, and that children would be better without it. It contains no strength, and therefore ought to be forbidden to the young. In an inquiry into the sickly condition of the children in many of the cotton factories of Lancashire, Dr. Ferguson, of Bolton, found that children between thirteen and sixteen years of age, who had been brought up on tea or coffee, increased in weight only about four pounds a year, while those fed on milk increased at the rate of about fifteen pounds a year. For this evil the blame rests entirely upon the mothers, who exceed the bounds of moderation in the use of tea. Though doctors differ widely in their views of the action of tea, they all agree that few things are more certain to produce "flatulence in the overworked female" than this beverage. Their views are shared by other authorities. Miss Barnett, speaking at the National Health Society's Exhibition last year, said, "I am constantly preaching against tea, as it is taken by the vast majority of the working women of England. They drink it at every meal, and suffer from indigestion before they come to middle age. They try to get the blackest fluid out of the tea, and in doing so draw out the tannin, which, though it has its virtues, acts upon the coats of the stomach and produces indigestion by middle life."

But the argument that tea shortens the life of every man who drinks it is absurd. "It is said," remarked Wm. Howitt, "that Mithridates could live and flourish on poisons, and, if it is true that tea or coffee is a poison, so do most of us. Wm. Hutton, the shrewd and humorous author of the histories of Birmingham and Derby, and also of a life of himself, scarcely inferior to that of Franklin in lessons of life-wisdom, said that he had been told that coffee was a slow poison, and he added that he had found it very slow, for he had drunk it more than sixty years without any ill effect. My experience of tea, as well as coffee," added Howitt, "has been the same." Howitt's experience is the experience of tens of thousands of people. The moral in this, as in other matters, is that people must judge for themselves whether tea is injurious or beneficial. As Dr. Poore candidly admits, "a properly controlled appetite, or instinct, is as safe a guide in the matters of diet as a physiologist or a moralist."

FOOTNOTES:

TEA AS A SOURCE OF REVENUE.

Tea heavily taxed--How it was adulterated in the "Good Old Times"--Efforts to secure a reduction in the duty--Why crime and ignorance prevail--Mr. Disraeli's proposal to reduce the duty on tea, opposed by Mr. Gladstone--Mr. Gladstone's legislation--The Chancellor of the Exchequer memorialized to reduce the duty on Indian tea--The annual expenditure on tea--Professor Leoni Levi's estimate of its consumption by the working classes.

Tea had not been in use many years before the government discovered in it a valuable means of replenishing the national exchequer. Accordingly they passed a law, in 1660, imposing a duty of eightpence per gallon on all tea made and sold in coffee-houses, which were visited twice daily by officers. It would occupy too much space to describe subsequent legislation, but the subject appears at times to have been almost as perplexing as the liquor traffic to the various governments.

The transfer did not, however, secure the approval of the tea-dealers, who continued to petition Parliament for a reduction of the duty. A society was formed at Liverpool with this object in view, and in 1846 its officers published a letter addressed to Sir Robert Peel, contending that, as tea was an object of the first importance to the labouring classes, "the duty on it should be such in amount and principle as to induce the greatest consumption." The memorialists argued:--

It was urged by those who defended the policy of the Government that tea was a stimulant, and that therefore it was injurious. "We admit the fact," said the Rev. Dr. Hume, "but we strenuously deny the inference. A stimulant is not necessarily injurious, though the more violent always are. Heat is a stimulant, and so is water in particular circumstances; food is a stimulant; the light of heaven is a stimulant, whether in animal or in vegetable nature, and so is the beaming countenance and kindling heart of a sympathetic friend."

Reference was also made to the argument, of which doubtless the Chancellor of the Exchequer is aware, that inasmuch as the average value of Indian teas is higher than that of China teas, the present duty weighs more heavily on the latter, and consequently that its abolition would deprive the Indian importer of a certain amount of protection; but at the same time the opinion was expressed that a general reduction of prices to the consumer all round would induce on the part of the public a more general preference for the superior quality of the Indian produce, and that the increased demand for it thereby engendered would more than counterbalance any loss of protection which might be sustained.

As will be seen from the following table of the duties, the consumers of tea contribute very largely to the revenue of the country:--

FOOTNOTE:

Abernethy, Dr., 51.

Ackworth School, 13.

Aikin, Dr., 12.

Alcohol and endurance, 72, 75.

Alcohol and genius, 80, 91, 94.

Ale, use of, 12, 73, 101.

American Health and Temperance Association, 118.

Animals, experiments upon, 111, 117.

Anti-Corn-Law League, 40, 102.

Anti-Teapot Society, 120.

Apprentices, 13.

Arctic weather, 67.

Artists and temperance, 42.

Assam tea, 19, 20, 22.

Banks, Collingwood, 42.

Barnett, Miss, 132.

Beer-gardens, 10.

Beer, use of, 12, 73, 101.

Betel, 107.

Beverley, Dr., 74.

Blue Ribbon meetings, 35.

Blyth, Dr. Wynter, 72.

Boswell, 81, 82.

Botanical Gardens, 19.

Bowles, 84.

Bright, John, 13.

Brotherton, Joseph, 39.

Bryant, William Cullen, 93.

Buckle, 66, 93, 119.

Burns, 80.

Byrom, John, 13.

Cakes and tea, 9.

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