Teas and Coffee, the former particularly, must be bad. For they are such as come under one of these heads,—1. Purloined from the warhouses. 2. Sweepings, 3. Imported from the continent or in American vessels. Now, 1. that which has been secreted about the persons of the workmen and porters, is likely to have acquired a flavour very different from what a delicate taste would expect from pure tea. 2. Sweepings from the holds of Indiamen, as well as the surplus sea-stock of officers and men, must lose their virtue by exposure, whatever the appearance may be, besides the contamination of every thing offensive. 3. Teas brought to Europe by foreigners, are not, at the beginning, so good as those of our East India Company; who pick and choose and cull all the best goods of every description in India as well as here, leaving to private adventurers, private traders and foreigners the refuse. This must be more particularly the case with tea, because the company buy nineteen twentieths of all that is brought to Canton; the Dutch, the Swedes, French, and Americans, dividing the remaining one-twentieth between them.
Such is the sort of tea which, on account of the high duty, is smuggled (in very small quantities) about London.
