"No useful plant could have withstood such attacks. If before this invention a man had been found to say, Let us seek the means of filling the coffers of the state by a voluntary tax; let us set about selling something which every body will like to do without. In America there is a plant essentially poisonous; if from its leaves you extract an empyreumatic oil, a single drop of it will cause an animal to die in horrible convulsions. Suppose we offer this plant for sale chopped up or reduced to a powder. We will sell it very dear, and tell people to stuff the powder up their noses.
"'That is to say, I suppose, you will force them to do so by law?'
"'Not a bit of it. I spoke of a voluntary tax. As to the portion we chop up, we will tell them to inhale it, and swallow a little of the smoke from it besides.'
"'No; they will become rather pale, perhaps feel giddy, spit blood, and suffer from colics, or have pains in the chest--that's all. Besides, you know, although it has been often said that habit is second nature, people are not yet aware how completely man resembles the knife, of which the blade first and then the handle had been changed two or three times. In man there is no nature left--nothing but habit remains. People will become like Mithridates, who had learnt to live on poisons.
"'The first time that a man will smoke he will feel sickness, nausea, giddiness, and colics; but that will go off by degrees, and in time he will get so accustomed to it, that he will only feel such symptoms now and then--when he smokes tobacco that is bad, or too strong--or when he is not well, and in five or six other cases. Those who take it in powder will sneeze, have a disagreeable smell, lose the sense of smelling, and establish in their nose a sort of perpetual blister.'
"'Quite the reverse. It has a very unpleasant smell; but, as I said, we'll sell it very dear, and reserve to ourselves the monopoly of it.'
"'My good friend,' one would have said to any one absurd enough to hold a similar language, 'nobody will envy you the privilege of selling a weed that no one will care to buy. You might as well open a shop and write on it: Kicks sold here; or, Such-a-one sells blows, wholesale and retail. You will find as many customers as for your poisonous weed.'