He afterwards quotes Paulli, to prove, that tea is a “desiccative, and ought not to be used after the fortieth year.”  I have, then, long exceeded the limits of permission, but I comfort myself, that all the enemies of tea cannot be in the right.  If tea be a desiccative, according to Paulli, it cannot weaken the fibres, as our author imagines; if it be emetick, it must constringe the stomach, rather than relax it.

The formidable quality of tinging the knife, it has in common with acorns, the bark, and leaves of oak, and every astringent bark or leaf:  the copperas, which is given to the tea, is really in the knife.  Ink may be made of any ferruginous matter, and astringent vegetable, as it is generally made of galls and copperas.

From tea, the writer digresses to spirituous liquors, about which he will have no controversy with the Literary Magazine; we shall, therefore, insert almost his whole letter, and add to it one testimony, that the mischiefs arising, on every side, from this compendious mode of drunkenness, are enormous and insupportable; equally to be found among the great and the mean; filling palaces with disquiet, and distraction, harder to be borne, as it cannot be mentioned; and overwhelming multitudes with incurable diseases, and unpitied poverty.

“Though tea and gin have spread their baneful influence over this island, and his majesty’s other dominions, yet, you may be well assured, that the governors of the Foundling Hospital will exert their utmost skill and vigilance, to prevent the children, under their care, from being poisoned, or enervated by one or the other.  This, however, is not the case of workhouses:  it is well known, to the shame of those who are charged with the care of them, that gin has been too often permitted to enter their gates;—­and the debauched appetites of the people, who inhabit these houses, has been urged as a reason for it.

“Desperate diseases require desperate remedies:  if laws are rigidly executed against murderers in the highway, those who provide a draught of gin, which we see is murderous, ought not to be countenanced.  I am now informed, that in certain hospitals, where the number of the sick used to be about 5600 in 14 years,

  From 1704 to 1718, they increased to 8189;
  From 1718 to 1734, still augmented to 12,710;
  And from 1734 to 1749, multiplied to 38,147.

“What a dreadful spectre does this exhibit! nor must we wonder, when satisfactory evidence was given, before the great council of the nation, that near eight millions of gallons of distilled spirits, at the standard it is commonly reduced to for drinking, was actually consumed annually in drams! the shocking difference in the numbers of the sick, and, we may presume, of the dead also, was supposed to keep pace with gin; and the most ingenious and unprejudiced physicians ascribed it to this cause.  What is to be done under these melancholy circumstances? shall we still countenance the distillery, for the sake of the revenue; out of tenderness to the few, who will suffer by its being abolished; for fear of the madness of the people; or that foreigners will run it in upon us?  There can be no evil so great as that we now suffer, except the making the same consumption, and paying for it to foreigners in money, which I hope never will be the case.