" The reader will, perhaps, say this pamphlet is purely
political, and what have you to do with it? But it is not so: there are
facts in these pages which interest every one and come home to every man's
mouth: the political purpose is to us like chaff; and these facts like
grains of wheat, so we will even pick a few. Meanwhile, the whole pamphlet
must be important to all, as to ourselves parts are interesting: it
represents the literature of the tea trade, and, best of all, the
profitable literature of _L.s.d._ It is written in a patriotic spirit;
witness this extract from the preface: "To a commercial union of wealth,
and a co-operation of talent and patriotism, a small island in the Western
Atlantic is indebted for the acquisition of one of the most splendid
empires that ever was subjected to the dominion of man, and also for the
rise and progress of an extraordinary commerce with a people inhabiting a
distant hemisphere, and heretofore shut out from all intercourse with the
majority of the human race;--a commerce equal in extent to 10,000,000_l_.
annually, and involving property to the amount of ten times that sum."
Our _facts_ must stand isolated, since to weave them into an argument
would be altogether foreign to our purpose.
_East India Company_.--Although the East India Company can alone import
tea, they cannot choose their own time of sale; they are compelled to put
up the tea at an advance of _one penny_ (_they do at one farthing_) per
lb.
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