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pare, too, the consumption of tobacco in Northern Germany and in Austria that is to say, the numbers 12.50 and 7.50. Yet there is more real activity (though we admit that there is less. liveliness) in Prussia and in the German States of the North than in Austria. In Great Britain we smoke only 4.75 pounds per head; but in the United States they smoke as much as 7·60. Finally, in the Papal States there is less tobacco consumed than any where else in that vast region of the globe which supports eight hundred millions of people among whom it is in use. Yet will any one say, that the energy of the inhabitants of the Papal States is to that of the Americans (which, according to Balzac's theory, ought to be the case) in the inverse proportion of the amount of tobacco smoked, snuffed, and chewed by each-that is to say, in the direct proportion of 7·50 to 200? The citizens of the United States smoke more, and drink far larger quantities of spirituous liquors than the subjects (recent and actual) of the Pope, while they also drink considerably more tea than any nation in Europe except England.

We think the statistics we have quoted sufficiently show that no theory can be formed upon them, either as to the injurious or uninjurious nature of tobacco. We would rather not be so heavy as the Germans, whose smoking power is represented by 12.50; nor so inane as the Italians of the Papal States, with whom it is only 2.00. It is plain that moderation in the use of tobacco will not make a nation strong; but it of course does not follow, that its use in excess will not render a nation weak. Indeed, the deleterious nature of tobacco is better shown by an analysis of the drug itself, and by exact observations of its effects on those who smoke it for the first time, than by any collection of facts bearing upon its effects, whether connected with individual classes, or with whole nations of smokers. We shall say no more about the smoking of nations, further than that, on the whole, the north of Europe smokes a great deal more than the south (as, by the way, it also drinks more), and yet it is not weaker than the south. As to classes, the only instance we know of in which

1 In France, the annual consumption of tobacco per head, averages in pounds, 5.50); in England, 4.75; in Russia (where the upper classes, nevertheless, smoke large quantities of cigarettes), 2.50.

smokers and non-smokers, subject in other respects to precisely the same influences of diet, temperature, lodging, and general habits, have been compared, occurred at the Polytechnic Schools of Paris, where all the advantages of steadiness, application, and proficiency in study, were found to be on the side of the nonsmokers. But who can say that tobacco obscures the intellect, when in England our three greatest writers in three different branches of literature-Tennyson, Thackeray, and Carlyle—all smoke? A doctor, speaking at one of the meetings of the AntiTobacco Association, held recently in Edinburgh, said positively that he had a patient suffering from paralysis brought on solely by smoking; and, what was still more extraordinary, that this person's body, or a portion of it, ceased to be paralysed when he ceased to smoke, and that the partial paralysis returned as regularly as he took to smoking again. "Here," said the speaker, “is a man who, if he wants a day's paralysis, has nothing to do but to take a cigar." This was a strong case, indeed-too strong and too exceptional to be of much use as a lesson. Nor, to our thinking, does the result of the comparison instituted at the Ecole Polytechnique tell, by any means, so plain a story as it appears to do at first; for at all schools the boys or young men who smoke, commit breaches of discipline in other matters as well. We should be very much astonished if a similar experiment at one of the German universities should show that, between an equal number of smokers and non-smokers, any appreciable majority of prizes fell to the share of the latter.

We think every one admits that excessive smoking is injurious, and this, as we have said, can be demonstrated as plainly as that opium is a poison. But did any nation ever contrive to get on without some sort of excitant with which to dispel that "inexorable wearisomeness" which, in the words of Bossuet, "forms the greater portion of human life?" If every age and every nation has its favourite stimulant, which is the most harmless, tobacco or alcohol? and is habitual smoking as likely to lead to as bad results, physical, moral, and mental, as habitual spirit-drinking? We may preach and form associations as much as we like; our modern life is so harassing, or so "inexorably wearisome" to the majority of men, that artificial pleasures, such as wine and tobacco

give them, seem at times almost necessaries. People will not abstain from all fermented liquors, or from all tobacco, because a man now and then dies of delirium tremens, or from paralysis brought on by excessive smoking. But it would be a good thing if Sir Benjamin Brodie, or some other competent authority, would tell us what sort of fermented liquor is likely to be the least injurious; and in what form, if we must smoke, we can consume tobacco with the greatest chance of impunity. It may be a suicidal habit to drink whisky, and smoke wet shag tobacco in short clay pipes, when it would be as harmless, as it is agreeable, to smoke very old Havannah cigars, or the light and fragrant tobacco of Turkey, rolled into cigarettes, and to drink the nourishing, exhilarating, and not too stimulating wine of Bordeaux.

History of the Life and Times of Edmund Burke. By Thomas
Macknight. Vol. III. London: Chapman & Hall.

THE first two volumes of this work, which were published in the beginning of the year 1858, brought down the life of Burke to the death of Lord Rockingham, in July, 1782. Lord Rockingham, as our readers may remember, had been Prime Minister for a short time in 1766, and during the intervening sixteen years, all that was best and purest in the Whig connection had ranged itself beneath his banner. Of this party Burke was the virtual leader in the House of Commons and in the press. His parliamentary speeches shed a lustre, which certain Whig writers have endeavoured to depreciate, on the opposition benches, but which must have had a vast effect in sustaining the self-respect of the party; while his political writings, as powerful as Junius and as polished as Cicero, exercised a corresponding influence upon the general public. In those corrupt days of narrow-minded politicians, the adhesion of a man like

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Burke, of high integrity and broad philosophic views, must have been of inestimable value to the cause which he espoused.. That Burke should have been unconscious of the true position. which he occupied is impossible; but he disdained to act upon it; and when Lord North was finally compelled to retire in March, 1782, and Lord Rockingham was again summoned to the helm, Burke nobly left himself in the hands of his party chiefs, and, as he had once before observed, left them to discover the rank he held in Parliament, for "he would not explain it himself." The result is one about which politicians will differ to the end of time. One party declares that Burke was shamefully illused by being a second time excluded from the cabinet. Another party maintains that he had really no right to claim a seat in it, the real practical work of the opposition having been done by others, and principally by Charles Fox. A third party, who are probably nearer to the truth, say that Burke's services to his friends were indeed inestimable, and that, had it been merely a question of what reward his advocacy merited, no post in the government would have been too good for him; but, they add, that this was not the only question—that the Whigs had other points to consider as well as the recompence of adherents, however able or deserving—and that the stability of the new cabinet was an object that might justly take precedence of all other considerations. Burke, they say, was too acrimonious and too fastidious to work well with other men; his theory of party obligations was more perfect than his ability to act upon it; and that, over and above these points, he had made himself so personally obnoxious to George III., that his presence in the cabinet would have been a fatal obstacle to that reconciliation between the Crown and the Whigs, which was naturally the first end to be accomplished by the new ministers. Such, we believe, is a tolerably faithful representation of the arguments on both sides. Mr. Macknight seems rather to avoid the controversy, and has not given us the benefit of his opinion upon the behaviour of Burke's colleagues. This is certainly an omission; but not having any profound confidence in this gentleman's reasoning powers, we do not deplore it very deeply, and are not sorry to plunge at once into his narrative, which is clear and spirited, and free from much of the over-fine writing which disfigured his earlier volumes.

The present volume starts from the formation of the Shelburne ministry, immediately after the death of Lord Rockingham. The consequence of the king's refusal to continue the administration of his affairs in the hands of Mr. Fox, was, as our readers may remember, a coalition between that statesman and his old enemy, Lord North. Between these two persons differences existed, as Mr. Macknight very truly observes, as deep as it is possible to conceive of between two English ministers. It was not this or that particular measure—this war or that treaty—about which they were at variance. They represented respectively two entirely different principles of government; Fox being the leader of that party who professed to walk in the footsteps of Walpole, the Pelhams, and the Duke of Bedford, and to make the King of England a nonentity; and North of those who sided with George III. in re-establishing the authority of the crown. The numerical majority which their union gave them for a time, was a poor equivalent for the general odium which it incurred; and which, ere long, caused their own followers to drop away, and invested their opponents with a popularity which, perhaps, nothing else could have conferred on them. We are happy to know that, in this disgraceful transaction, the share taken by Burke was comparatively trifling. Mr. Macknight's chapter upon his conduct during this crisis of affairs is very well worth reading. It is temperate, sensible, and clear. Without absolving Burke from all blame, he yet points out that he had hardly any other course to pursue than to acquiesce in what his party agreed to. But if he did do this, it was of little use to do it by halves. Mr. Macknight blames him for having advised the followers of the late Lord Rockingham to join the coalition. Yet he had no alternative between doing this, and forming them into an independent party, with himself at their head. This conduct would have been open to more misconstruction than perhaps the good to be gained by it would have justified him in incurring. However this may be, the consequences of this unprincipled proceeding, fell as heavily upon his own head as upon the parties more immediately concerned in it, whose exclusion from office was, of course, shared by their lieutenant.

In the short-lived coalition ministry Burke was again made Paymaster of the Forces. But his real importance was shown

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