1752.

Growth and Qualities of TOBACCO.

king had declared at feveral times, that
he would detain the capital which he had
engaged to re-imburfe to the English, in
difcharge of the debt on Silefia, and pay
his fubjects out of it. This hath obliged
the king to yield to the preffing instances
and repeated folicitations of his subjects;
to efpoufe their caufe, and make ufe of A
the methods which reafon and the law of
nations dictate, and determined him to
indemnify his fubjects out of the money
belonging to the English that is in his
hands.

B

This relation of the facts (which makes 25 pages in quarto) is followed by an examination of four questions relating to the grounds of the affair, upon the principles of the law of nature and of nations, as delivered by Grotius, Camden, Selden, Puffendorff, and others. There is alfo an appendix, of 21 pages, containing what that prince calls the proofs; being a lift of the Pruffian veffels that were taken, printed in feven columns. 1. The number of veffels taken, amounting to C 18. 2. The names of the fhips, and captains. 3. The names of the English privateers that took them. 4. The voyages on which they were taken. 5. The time they were detained. 6. The names of the Pruffian fufferers. 7. The reasons affigned for their detention.

From the LONDON GAZETTEER.

SIR,

I

London, December 26, 1752.

HAVE taken frequent notice of your paper for feveral juft obfervations, in refpect to trade; particularly, a remark in that of Saturday the 23d inftant, wherein you mention "the vast quantities of fnuff manufactured and fold by Jews, and others, and the pernicious practice of adulterating genuine tobacco, with unwholfome compofitions, greatly hurtful to thofe who take it :" Whereas, fnuff, or tobacco, in its pure original growth, as imported, is, perhaps, as faJubrious in its quality (if taken with moderation) for the head, eyes, ftomach, and various other diforders incident to human nature, as any one compofition in the whole materia medica

In proof of which, I fhall beg leave, thro' the channel of your paper, to convey the following obfervations to publick notice.

On the Growth, and peculiar Qualities of

TOBACCO.

MOBACCO, in its growth, or man

Ter of production from the earth,

rifes up with a thick, round stalk, about two foot high, on which grow thick, fat eaves, round pointed, and fomewhat

D

605

dented about the edges: At the top ftand divers flowers in green husks, round pointed alfo, and of a greenish, yellow colour : Its feed is not very bright, but large, contained in great heads; and the roots of the tobacco raised in fome. particular parts of England, perith every winter, but rife generally of its own fowing. English tobacco, fome years ago, grew very favourably near Winscombe in Gloucestershire, as delighting in a fruitful foil. The nature and property of Virginia, Maryland, or English tobacco, is pretty much the fame except in fmoaking; in which that produced in Virginia is efteemed the most excellent, and fweet in its kind.

Tobacco is good to expectorate tough phlegm, the juice being made into a syrup, or, the diftilled water drank with fugar, or, the fmoak taken fafting in a pipe: It eafes all gripings in the bowels, pains in the head, expels wind: The feed is good to eafe the tooth ach; and the afhes of the herb cleanfes the gums and teeth, and makes them white: The bruised herb is profitably applied to fwellings of the king's evil Four or five ounces of the juice taken fafting, purges the blood, as cathartick, and emetick, at the fame time; purifies the whole mafs of blood, by fuch operations, and is an effectual remedy for the dropfy. The diftilled water taken with fugar is excellent to carry off an ague. There is a liquor diftilled from it extreme good for all cramps, aches, the gout, fciatica, cankers, or foul fores. There is alío an excellent falve made of tobacco, good for impofthumes, hard tumors, fwellings by blows, &c. well known among judicious apothecaries by Ethe name of unguentum nicstianum, or ointment of tobacco; and, the green leaves of tobacco being cut fmall and put into a glafs, or gallipot well ftopped, filled up with fallad oil, fet in hot water, or in the fun forty days, will be found a precious balm; of which, as to the ufes, and applications, the learned of the faculty are no strangers.

G

Thefe are the experienced good qualities of tobacco; therefore adulterating it in its manufactory into fnuff, or in any other degree, are alike fcandalous and pernicious; equally hurtful to the publick in general by a grofs impofition on all fnufftakers; and alike as to the importers, or wholefale traders in tobacco, as well as the revenue.

For admitting that in London, Bristol, Worcester, Hull, and other particular places, in different parts of Great Britain, where fnuff is chiefly manufactured, between 3 and 4000 hogtheads of tobacco are annually

4H 2

606

OBSCENITY in DISCOURSE condemned. App.

annually manufactured into fnuff, (exclu-
five of all foreign fauffs imported) and,
that in fuch inanufactory, and fale of
fnuffs, the quantity of 7 or 8 hundred
hegheads only, of different and unwhol-
fome ingredients are mixed, and thrown
in instead of genuine tobacco; is it not
obvious that the importers lofe the fale of A
fo many nett hogheads of tobacco by fuch
adulteration? The takers of fnuff, be-
fide the injury done to their health, pay
in proportion for fuch injurious compofi-
tion. and the revenue lofes the duty of
fo much tobacco, in confequer eo both.
--The fat either way is equally manifeft,
and therefore equites fome method to
prevent it. A remedy of which (as well B
as in all fuch kind of adulterations) I
fhould be heartily glad to fee applied,
provided no extra duties are laid on im-
portation.

From the INSPECTOR. Dec. 28.

-Want of Decency is Want of Senfe.
T would be hard to fay what there is
fo infamous, or fo ill, that custom
will not authorize, what deformities there
can be in an object, that habit will not
make men overlock. We read with hor-
ror, the accounts of expofing children to
the favages, and of throwing parents to
the dogs, as practifed by nations who
called themselves, nay, and who thought D

themfelves civilized and mentioned
without horror by their poets and hifto-
rians. When the one were too nume-
Tous for the income, and the other no
longer ufeful to the community, there was
fuppofed no crime in their destruction.
We read of things, altho' lefs horrible,
yet not lefs fhocking to nature; crimes,
which are at this time treated with infa-
my, and condemned to capital punish-
ment, authorized among the politeft, nay,
among thofe who were, in many respects,
the most virtuous people, practifed with
impunity, and mentioned without the
leaft referve or fhame by the most elegant
of their writers. Whence are we to fup-
pofe all this has rifen? Some little, fome F
fint attempt, not crushed in the begin-
ning, has enlarged itfelf under the fhadow
of impunity, and by dugeees rifen to
heights, under the inattention of thofe,
whofe duty it was to have cenfured it ;
at the leaft of which it would otherwife
have been condemned to infamy and pu-
nishment.

In an age fo polished and refined as this, we are not to fuppofe brutality and a favage deftruction of one another, could be permitted. Under a religion perfect like

we cannot think it poffible that
acknowledged and unquestioned

crimes, could pafs uncondemned; nor is
it to be imagined, that among people fa-
mous for their humanity, flaughter of
the unoffending could be permitted. We
are happy in the refinement, and in the
generofity of the age; we are most hap-
py in the purity of our religion; but men
exprefs their gratitude very ill, who do
not conform their morals to these acknow-
ledged advantages. It is true, the crimes
which have flaired the Grecian and the
Roman world are many of them quite
unknown, most of them dif vowed among
us. Cuftom has been difplaced in these
things, and virtue and huma. ity have tak
en their feats above her: But altho' we

are not to be reproached with murder
and with crimes too infamous to name,
practifed openly and avowedly by the
greateft as well as the leaft; we are not
without our leffer blemishes; faults au-
thorifed by curton, countenanced by the
practice of the great and the polite; and
faults which therefore do, and therefore
will spread without end; and which, al-
tho' only infamous in their beginnings,
will doublefs, under fuch patronage and
fuch encouragement, rife into the highest
crimes. Those who were accustomed to
the greater, could not be fuppofed to have
attention to the leifer enormities: We
who are happy in the abfence of thofe,
may devote our cares to root out and abo-
lith these. Nor will there be lefs merit in
the attempt ; fince what these want in
circumftance of the offence, they have in
number of the offenders.

We

Chfcenity in difcourfe, univerfal as it is
among the men, nay, and the men of taste
and fenfe at this time, is not the lefs cul-
pable for that authority. It is the great
feandal of our nation in the present age;
and it is not difficult to fee, that it will
overthrow all our virtue in another.
have acquired it late, and therefore we
condemn it while we practife it; but the
rifing generation, whom we inure to it fo
early, will have received it as a first and
fixed principle, and fuppofing it right, be-
caufe they had it from their fathers, they
will propagate it in their children: And
conforming their practice to their exam-
ple, will make their lives thofe of the fol-
lowers of a Comus, or the celebrators of
a Dacchanalian revelry.

It may appear partial, and it may ap-
pear fingular, to deduce half the crimes
as well as fellies, of the men of the pre-
Gfent age, from their want of refpect to
the other fex: But let it appear as it will,
it is true. It is to the banishing thefe ra-
tional companions from the table, that
all the fameless roafts of the afternoon
have owed their origin: It is to the neg-

leding

1752. EXPERIMENT of Electricity and Lightning. 607

lecting thefe as qualified for converfation, that evenings which might be happily

modefty in women: In men, I appeal
to the women, for they are the best

spent at home, are lingered away at cof-judges, in men it is yet more amiable.

fee-houfes and in taverns; places where'
only men meet together, and where, hav-
ing loft all relifh for the reafonable fond-
nefs of the fex, they indulge what, had
they voices, would be the love-language A
of bulls, of boars, of goats and monkies.
He who is not qualified for the pleasures
of an innocent converfation, with a vir-
tuous woman whom he loves, is ignorant
of the first human pleafures. Why will
thofe facrifice it, who have talents to en-
joy it? There was a time, when the
writings of the greatest wits abounded
with this indelicate turn, and when the
ftage was almoft fupported by it.
have the chastity and virtue to have driven
it perfectly from thefe publick occafions
of fcandal; it is hard that the fame ge-
nerous principle cannot drive it out of
our own breafts, and banish it our pri-
vate converfation.

We

B

Men of wit should be ashamed of what C they fee is in the power of every fool: Men of probity fhould be shocked at imprinting in the minds of youth, principles, the confequences of which must be At what table is debauchery and ruin. He has this omitted?-Only at Urfino's. the art of keeping his lady there; and by this filent admonition guards against it all: But by this he has loft half his

We affect to with ourfelves well with
them: Nothing is fo great a recommen-
dation, The virtues are all allied to one
another; the introducing this would be
the inviting a thousand others into the
fame habitations. Who were fo wife,
who were fo juft, who were fo brave,
as the old Spartans? What was their
character? Afk their historian and he
will inform you, they were more than
all men modeft: They were as cold,
as chafte, and as referved, he tells us, as
It would
the virgin in her bridal bed.
be an ill compliment to our country, to
fuppofe that with the abfence of this,
we had loft the other virtues they poffeffed;
but certain it is, I never fee a man par-
ticular and noify in the offence against
decency, but I suppose him to be a bully
and a coward.

Account of an Experiment made with fuccefs
at Philadelphia in Penfilvania, to prove
the Indentity of the Electrical Fire with
that of Lightning.

M

AKE a fmall crofs of two light ftrips of cedar, the arms fo long as to extend to the four corners of a large, thin, filk handkerchief when stretched out. Tie the corners of the handkerchief to the

Dextremities of the crofs: So you have the body of a kite, which, being properly accommodated with a tail, loop, and ftring, will rife in the air like thofe made of paper; but this being of filk, is fitter to bear the wet and wind of a thunder

company. Wherever elfe one dines, it is
certain to follow the defert: No care of
children, no refpect of perfons, flops it.
We hear it before boys who can scarce
fpeak; before grey heads which ought to
have forgot it; and even before the clergy.
It will be natural to ask, how fo polite a
man as Urfino came to be fingle in dif- E
countenancing it: Shame was the mo-
tive: But be the caufe what it would,
the refolution with which he perfifts in his
Urfino di-
reformation, is honourable.

ned with a late worthy prelate; his fon an
infant was then with him; the boy ftood
at the right hand of the reverend lord,
and while the ladies were at table, feizing
the opportunity of giving his teaft, lifp-
ed out a moft obfcene one.

The women

F

understood it not; the prelate was shock-
ed; the boy repeated it; and fecing they
were furprised, told them it was what his
father always toafted after dinner. The
event was ferious, and the confequence is
happy. We owe to the admonitions of
the bishop, one example of what is right : G
But fuch is the prevalence of cuftom, it is
not followed.

It is ftrange that what we know to be wrong, what every man, who does it, will confefs to be fo, yet even continues to commit and to inculcate. We admire

Το

guft, without tearing. To the top of
the upright ftick of the crofs is to be
fixed a very fharp pointed wire rifing
a foot or more above the wood.
the end of the twine next the hand is
to be fixed a filk ribbon, and where the
twine and filk join, a key may be fastened.
The kite is to be raifed when a thunder
gut appears to be coming on, and the
perfon who holds the ftring muft ftand
within a door or window, or under fome
cover, fo that the filk ribbon may not
be wet; and care must be taken that
the twine does not touch the frame of
the door or window. As foon as any
of the thunder clouds come over the
kite, the pointed wire will draw the
electrical fire from them, and the kite
with all the twine will be electrified, and
the loofe filaments of the twine will
ftand out every way, and be attracted
by an approaching finger. And when
the rain has wetted the kite and twine,
fo that it can conduct the electrical fire
freely, you will find it ftream out plenti-

fully

608

Engagement in the EAST-INDIES.

fully from the key on the approach of
your knuckles. At this key the vial may
be charged, and from electrical fire thus
obtained, fpirits may be kindled; and
all the other electrical experiments be
performed, which are ufually done by
the help of a rubbed glafs globe or tube;
and thereby the fameness of the electrical A
fire with that of lightning, be compleatly
demonstrated.

L

From the LONDON GAZETTE.

App.

to oppofe him. Major Lawrence, in order to fecure the baggage, marched to meet them; this brought on a cannonading from them, which did him but little damage, but his guns galled the enemy very much, and forced them to retreat into a hollow way; upon this major Lawrence drew off his men, and joined the army that night. In this action the enemy loft above 300 horse, befides Allam Cawn, a man of great intereft in the country.

Chundah was foon obliged to raise the fiege of Trichinopoly, and collect his forces in Syringham, a neighbouring inland; and the English forces having B poffeffed themfelves of all the strong posts quite round it, they fo effectually prevented provifions from coming to the enemy, that Chundah's great army of above 30,000 men was difperfed in lefs than two months, and himself, with the French, and a few black horfe and Seepoys, who held out, were reduced to a miferable condition for want of fufte

ETTERS from Fort St. George, in the Eaft-Indies, dated July 5, 1752, have brought the following account : "The prefident and council of Fort St. George, having received information fome time ago, that Chundalı Saib, the French Nabob, and his allies, were endeavouring to harrats us in our own diftricts, fent for a reinforcement from Bengal, and alfo fent capt. Clive to Madrass, who having collected out forces and taken the field, found the enemy strongly encamped at Vendaloor, a place about 15 C miles diftant from hence. The enemy decamped in the night, taking the rout of Arcot, and were purfued by the forces of the Mogul's Nabob; but they gained Covereepaure, about 60 miles off, which place was appointed for their rendezvous, their intention having been to furprize Arcot. Here an engagement enfued, in which most of their European forces were killed and made prifoners, and their cannon and baggage taken. Upon this advice capt. Clive was immediately ordered to march. He took St. David's in his way, and whilft he was there, the fhip Dorrington arrived, with major Lawrence, who, at his own request, had the command of the forces given to him, E and he fet out, on March 17, for Fort St. David, at the head of a party of 400 Europeans and 1000 Seepoys, taking under convoy a large quantity of stores and ammunition for Trichinopoly, and proceeded, without moleftation, till he came with his forces near Coiladdy on the 28th, when the enemy ftrove to takeadvantage of his fituation: For this purpole, a strong detachment of French from Chundah Saib's army, having thrown up an intrenchment in the way he was to march, cannonaded him from it, and endeavoured to interrupt his paffage; which induced major Lawrence, on the part of the Mogul's Nabob, to return it, and occafioned the lofs of fome men on G both fides: But, the enemy not advanIcing, he went on the next day for Trichinopoly, about 16 miles diftant. The road being in fight of the enemy's camp, they came out with their whole force

F

nance.

Upon this the Mogul's Nabob fummoned them to furrender prifoners, and after they had fent Chundah in the nighttime to Monacjee, they delivered up the ifland of Syringham on the 3d of June, on condition the French officers fhould have leave to go to Pondicherry, on their parole never to ferve against the Nabob or his allies, and the foldiers to be sent to Europe by the first opportunity, but in the mean time to be kept prifoners. As the allies could not agree who should keep Chundah the French Nabob, who was taken at Monacjee by the Tanjore ally, to end the difpute his head was ftruck off.

The whole business was done in a few fieges and fome fkirmishes, in feveral of which not a man of our forces was loft; fo that in reducing the Blacks to the Mogul's Nabob's obedience, and making 30 officers and near 1000 European foidiers prifoners, we had not 50 men killed.

M. Dupleix, at the defire of Salabad Jing, has folicited for a peace, which the Mogul's Nabob is willing to confent to, provided it is made to our fatisfaction, as he owns himself much obliged to us."

To this we fhall add the following account from the other papers.

When the battle in the Eaft Indies was over, and the French had thrown down their arms, the natives would have massacred them all, but that they threw themfelves under the protection of the English, which alone faved them. The French had received but one fhip with 300 men from Europe, for a long time; which, to

gether

}

Remarks on the bad State of the ROADS.

gether with the lofs of the fhip with stores,
that was blown up on the coast of Africa,
entirely broke their measures. The French
officers are on their patrole, but are not
to ferve against the English for a certain
time; and the common men are to be
fent to Europe.

The number of christenings in Amfter-
dam this year, amounted to 4255, and the
burials to 6969.

The Converfation of many Persons turning at
prefent on the wretched Condition of our
ROADS, and the Importance of this Affair
to the Publick, bave occafioned the following

E

Another evil is, that all heavy carri- F ages are obliged to keep the fame track, unless when met by other carriages, and then they are obliged to quit, with great difficulty, one bad track for another; tearing, racking and breaking the road, harness and carriage, often overturning and damaging the goods, crippling or killing perfons in the waggon, and laming. and deftroying the horses: This, with G the lofs of time by fuch impediments, obliges the carrier to raife the price of the carriage of goods, a thing very hurtful to our manufacturers, and big with too many obvious mifchiefs to require their being enlarged on,