A Counterblaste to Tobacco

"[2] James's dislike of tobacco led him in 1604[3] to authorise Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset, to levy an excise tax and tariff of six shillings and eight pence per pound of tobacco imported,[4] or £1 per three pounds, a large sum of money for the time.

[5] Because of the persistently high demand for tobacco in England and the negative effects on the economies of the American colonies, the king in 1624 instead created a royal monopoly for the crop.

[3] 150 years later the British utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham would cite A Counterblaste to Tobacco as an example of antipathy run wild.

[2] Have you not reason then to bee ashamed, and to forbeare this filthie noveltie, so basely grounded, so foolishly received and so grossely mistaken in the right use thereof?

A custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse.