A furious, and yet unappeased, controversy has lately raged in the
newspapers, upon the question of the filthy nuisance of smoking
tobacco--segars or pipe; and as in all other cases when men allow their
passions to be heated by opposition, has run in great personalities
between gentlemen who sign themselves Viator and Tabatiere. Whole
columns of the newspapers have been occupied in discussing, in the first
place, whether a man who smokes at all is a beast or not; and secondly,
the argument has run into the comparative beastliness of smoking and
snuffing. A future Hume, on looking over the journals, may thus sum up
the merits of the case. About this period great hostilities arose
between the advocates of segars and their opponents, which occupied the
attention of thousands, who took a lively interest in the successful
issue of the controversy. By the advocates for the practice it was urged
with some plausibility of statement, that as to the pleasure of a segar,
none but those who used them ought to express an opinion upon the
point--that to appeal to experience, tobacco was in more universal
use among nations than bread corn--that it had been known to stay the
plague, and was the friend and companion of rich and poor. These
statements were met with undisguised contempt, and it was retaliated,
that the practice of using tobacco either by smoke or snuff, was a
nuisance to others, thus infringing the very primary principles of civil
liberty--that it led to drunkenness and debauch--that snuff spoiled the
complexion--stopped the nose to the perception of odours--and that as to
the ladies, they would positively spurn any approach of familiar
friendship from a snuff-taker. This raised the concealed anger of the
snuff-takers, who had hitherto maintained a stubborn neutrality while
the argument was kept to smoke. They replied both by wit and
invective--they affirmed snuff to have a moral use--"Dust to
dust"--would remind them of the brevity of life--that the king and
ministers patronized the habit, and gave away £10,000 worth of
snuff-boxes in every year--that as to the nose being blockaded, that was
a happy circumstance to London residents, and enabled them to acquire
the French accent more naturally--that as to the assumed yellowness of
complexion complained of, it was only studious and Werter-like--and that
as to the ladies refusing to be saluted by snuff-takers, that was a
thing which modesty and prudence required them to sneeze at. The
historian might add by way of reflection, that nothing could more
clearly show the national freedom from anxious cares, when it was
thought that the public took interest in the comparative merits of
blackened teeth or a snuffy pocket-handkerchief.--_The Inspector._
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