Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 March 1888 — The Libel on Washington. [ARTICLE]

The Libel on Washington.

It was a blunder to take advantage of the patriotic occasion of the celebration of Washington’s birthday to load his memory with the opprobrium of having been the original American protectionist. The revenue tariff bill that Washington put his name to taxed thirty articles, against the 4,000 covered by the present tariff. The duties in the first tariff, devised by Hamilton, averaged 8£ per cent. The first tariff was a moderate measure for revenue; the last tariff was devised partly for pnblic revenue, but mainly for the advantage of favored monopolies.— Philadelphia Record.

Qninina and Opinm Craving. Mr. John Ferguson, a well-known resident of Ceylon and newspaper proprietor, has addressed a letter to the Secretary of the Anti-Opium Foe ety on the value of sulphate of quinine, or even the inferior alkaloids from cinchona bark, as prophylactics aud tonics, especially iu low-lying and malarial districts, where people are addicted to the use of opium m order to relieve the fever depression. The prevalence of the opium-craving in many parts of the world is due, says Mr. Ferguson, to the people being subject to a low type of fever. This is largely the case iu China. In England it has been shown that the consumption of opium, chiefly in the form of laudanum, is very large in the fen districts and along the lower banks of the Thames, especially about Gravesend. A Lincolnshire village druggist stated some years ago, in a letter published in the newspapers, that he sold about two gallons of laudanum per month retail, besides sixteen or twenty ounces of opium itself, mostly to women of the poorer classes, who must pinch themselves seriously in many ways to purchase the luxury. Many, he said, consume an ounce of opium a week, and some considerably more. The main caase of this craving, according to Mr. Ferguson, is that the people live in low and malarial localities, and he suggests that quinine removes the craving and acts as a substitute for laudanum. He quotes from Mr. Colquhon’s travels iu China to show that the Chinese, even in remote inland districts along the Canton River, know the efficacy of quinine in superseding the need for opium, and possibly in curing the taste and desire for it.’ A few years ago the price of quinine and the.cinchona alkaloids were prohibitory to poor people, but the cultivation of the plant in India, Ceylon, and Java had reduced the price of the best sulphate of quinine from 10s. 15s. and even 18s. au ounce to half a crown, and even to less. In 1872, 11,457 pounds of cinchona bark was exported from Ceylon; now the export is from 18,000,0u0 to 15,000,000 pounds. But, although the wholesale price of quinine is so enormously reduced, the retail prices are frequently still calculated on the rate from time immemorial of £2 an ounce, which is purchased at less than 3s. —London Times.