Coffee was brought to Western Europe, by way of Marseilles, in 1644,
and made its first appearance in London about 1652. In 1853, the
estimated consumption of coffee in Great Britain, according to official
returns, was thirty-five million pounds, and in the United States, one
hundred and seventy-five million pounds, a year.
Tea, in like manner, from its first importation into England by the
Dutch East India Company, early in the seventeenth century, and from a
consumption indicated by its price, being sixty shillings a pound, has
proportionately increased in national use, until, in 1854, the United
States imported and retained for home consumption twenty-five million
pounds, and England fifty-eight million pounds.
Two centuries have witnessed this almost incredible advance. The
consumption of coffee alone has increased, in the past twenty-five
years, at the rate of four _per cent. per annum_, throughout the world.
We pay annually for coffee fifteen millions of dollars, and for tea
seven millions. Twenty-two millions of dollars for articles which are
popularly accounted neither fuel, nor clothing, nor food!
"What a waste!" cries the reformer; "nearly a dollar apiece, from every
man, woman, and child throughout the country, spent on two useless
luxuries!"
Is it a waste? Is it possible that we throw all this away, year after
year, in idle stimulation or sedation?
It is but too true, that the instinct, leading to the use of some form
of stimulant, appears to be universal in the human race.
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