upon which he operated, which, as far as it goes, is proof positive; and some presumptive proof is afforded by the peculiar properties so universally attributed to green tea, in its exercising a powerful and hurtful influence on the nervous system. One fact is well ascertained and undeniable the Chinese themselves do not consume those kinds of green tea which are prepared for exportation. The Yu-tsien mentioned before, and the Pekoe made from the green-tea plant already described, have a yellower, and as it were a more natural, hue, than the bluish-green that distinguishes the elaborated teas imported by us. If deleterious substances are really used, our best safeguard consists in the minute proportions in which they must be combined with the leaves.

Of the 31,500,000 lbs. of tea which, on an average of the four last years of the Company's charter, were imported into this country, the proportion of green to black had been about one to five. Various reasons conduced to make the black a preferable article of consumption to the majority. It is not only cheaper than the green, but it abounds much more in that quality termed "strength," and is besides, with the exception of the Pekoe kind, capable of being kept for a long time without any perceptible deterioration. It would be useless to pretend that the long sea-voyage, in which the equator is twice crossed, and the water in which the ship floats is often heated to between 80° and 90°, has no ill effect on tea cargoes. With an absolute and complete absence of all humidity, we hnow that heat has little or no decomposing effect; but such a state cannot be the ordinary characteristic of a ship's hold, as must be clear to all who have found the difficulty of preserving some articles from damage between this and India. Black tea is better able to contend with the chances of injury, to which a cargo may be exposed,

than green. * It has generally been subjected in a much

greater degree to the action of fire in drying, and has, besides, less delicacy of flavour than the other. Instances have been known of black tea being kept in this country for ten years, or even longer, without suffering perceptibly; and the Chinese themselves generally lay it by for a year in preference to using it fresh. There seems upon the whole little difficulty in accounting for the superior condition in which green tea, especially, is said to be found in Russia. The same circumstance of a land-journey, which makes it come dearer to the consumer,† tends at the same time to preserve its quality, for the region which it traverses is generally dry as well as cold.

In no instance has a greater revolution taken place in the habits of a people than in that which tea has effected within the last hundred years among the English. It was known, about the middle of the seventeenth century, rather as a curiosity than an article of use, as appears from an entry in Pepys's gossiping Diary, dated 1661, in which the writer says that he "sent for a cup of tea, a Chinese drink, of which he had never drank before." About the beginning of the last century it came more into use; and the following statement exhibits the surprising strides which it made from time to time, in the space of just one hundred years, towards its universal consumption at the close of the Company's charter :

* Some of the Company's finest Hyson teas were packed in double cases of wood besides the canisters.

† The lowest retail price at St. Petersburg is between five and six shillings English, and the highest is said to be above thirty-eight shillings per pound.

1768

1785

1800

1833

lbs. 6,892,075 10,856,578 . 20,358,702 31,829,619

In 1806 the excise duty was raised to ninety per cent., and in 1819 to nearly one hundred per cent., on the sale price of all teas—a tax which must have had a powerful effect in checking the growth of consumption. In spite, however, of this, it is well known that the importations into this country exceeded the aggregate consumption of the whole western world besides.* By a letter written from Siberia to Canton, in 1819, it appears that the quantity annually carried to Russia amounted to 66,000 chests, containing about 5,000,000 lbs., and no material increase has since taken place. The French trade with China seems lately to have shown a tendency to increase. A year or two since there were several French ships at Canton and other ports, where it was formerly unusual to see one; and French consuls have been appointed since the war. Up to 1832 the consumption of tea in France barely equalled 250,000 lbs. ; but a notion that it was an antidote to cholera is said to have brought it more into use, while a large amount is annually required for the English residents alone.

In the year 1832 no less than seventeen Dutch vessels visited China from Holland or Batavia, though the importations of tea into Holland did not exceed 2,000,000 lbs. per annum. A Danish ship now and then arrives at the ports; but the consumption of Denmark has been no greater than that of France. In most other countries of Europe, tea, if sold at all, is generally met with as a drug,

*After the opening of the trade, the tea duty was reduced to 28. a pound on all teas alike; and now, in 1857, the duty is 1s. 5d., to be ultimately brought down to 18.

and hardly looked upon by the merchants as an object of trade. Next to the British trade, the most considerable in tonnage and value has been that of the United States; subject, however, to fluctuations from which our own has been free. The remission of the tea duties, already alluded to, gave it, in 1833, a sudden stimulus, and the exports and imports at Canton, on the part of the Americans, each of them exceeded eight millions of dollars on board of nearly fifty small vessels. In consequence, however, of the losses sustained upon the teas, the American tonnage in the following year, 1834, was greatly reduced, nor was it expected very soon to reach its previous amount. The annual consumption of teas in the United States was then commonly estimated at about 8,000,000 lbs. Until the year 1824 our North American colonists, in Canada and Nova Scotia, were chiefly supplied with tea smuggled across the lakes from the northern states of the Union; but in that year the East India Company began to send an annual provision of about three ship-loads of cheap teas to Quebec and Halifax, which had the effect of altogether stopping the American supply.

From

The opening of the four new ports of trade, consequent on the Treaty of 1842, naturally produced a great revolution in most branches, both of our own and the American trade, and especially in the largest, that of tea. something above thirty millions of pounds at the close of the Company's charter, the importation into Great Britain grew to forty-two millions in 1844, and in 1856 it was above eighty millions. As the shipments at Shanghae increased, those at Canton relatively diminished; though the positive aggregate quantity from both places was augmented. Even Foochow-foo, at first so unpromising, from the difficulties of the river and the discouragements

on the part of both government and people, of late years exported a considerable amount of black teas, the manufacture of the province.

But the largest increase of all was in the article of raw silk from Shanghae. This had been comparatively an inconsiderable branch of commerce at Canton, situated so far from the silk-producing districts; but the last year's importation from Shanghae, in 1856, was to the immense amount of 50,000 bales in this delicate and costly material. Meanwhile, the insuperable prejudices of the Chinese have operated, as before, against an extended consumption of our own manufactures, and the result has been that, in lieu of British goods, an enormous drain of silver to the Chinese ports has occasioned no small amount of public inconvenience.

CONCLUSION. The comments of so high an authority as Lord Brougham,* after an examination of the foregoing work, upon the institutions of China, are of such value as to render some extracts from them the most fitting conclusion.—“ The Chinese Empire certainly presents to the eye, both of the common observer and of the political reasoner, the most singular spectacle in the whole social history of our species. A territory of enormous extent, stretching fourteen hundred miles from east to west, and as many from north to south, peopled by above three hundred millions of persons, all living under one sovereign-preserving their customs for a period far beyond the beginning of authentic history elsewhere--civilized when Europe was sunk in barbarism-possessed, many centuries before ourselves, of the arts which we deem the principal triumphs of civilization, and even yet not *Political Philosophy, vol. i. p. 160.