“In Great Britain, 17 ounces per head; in France, 18 1/2 ounces,—­three-eighths of this quantity being used in the form of snuff; in Denmark, 70 ounces (4 1/2 lbs.) per head; and in Belgium, 73 1/2 ounces per head;—­in New South Wales, where there are no duties, by official returns, 14 pounds per head.”  We doubt if these quantities much exceed the European average, particularly of Germany and Turkey in Europe.  “In some of the States of North America the proportion is much larger, while among Eastern nations, where there are no duties, it is believed to be greater still.”

The average for the whole human race of one thousand millions has been reasonably set at seventy ounces per head; which gives a total produce and consumption of tobacco of two millions of tons, or 4,480,000,000 of pounds!  “At eight hundred pounds an acre, this would require five and a half million acres of rich land to be kept constantly under tobacco-cultivation.”

“The whole amount of wheat consumed by the inhabitants of Great Britain weighs only four and one-third million tons.”  The reader can draw his own inferences.

The United States are among the largest producers of tobacco, furnishing one-twentieth of the estimated production of the whole world.  According to the last census, we raised in 1850 about two hundred million pounds.  All the States, with five exceptions,—­and two of these are Utah and Minnesota,—­shared, in various degrees, in the growth of this great staple.  Confining our attention to those which raised a million of pounds and upwards, we find Connecticut and Indiana cited at one million each; Ohio and North Carolina, at ten to twelve millions; Missouri, Tennessee, and Maryland, from seventeen to twenty-one millions; Kentucky and Virginia, about fifty-six million pounds.

Of this gross two hundred million pounds, we export one hundred and twenty-two millions, leaving about seventy-eight millions for home consumption.

Not satisfied with the quality of this modest amount, we import also, from Cuba, Turkey, Germany, etc., about four million pounds, in Havana and Manila cigars and Turkish and German manufactured smoking-tobacco.  Thus we increase the total of our consumption to eighty-two million pounds, which gives about three pounds eight ounces to every inhabitant of the United States, against seventeen ounces in England, and eighteen ounces in France.  From 1840 to 1850, the consumption in the United States, per head, increased from two pounds and half an ounce to three pounds eight ounces.  Here, we buy our tobacco at a fair profit to the producer.  In most of the countries of Europe it is either subject to a high tax, or made a government monopoly, both as regards its cultivation, and its manufacture and sale.  France consumes about forty-one million pounds, and the imperial exchequer is thereby enriched eighty-six million francs per annum.  Not only is the poor man thus obliged to pay an excessive