Britain and Tea

Britain and Tea

Tea was brought to England in the late seventeenth century. The drink became a national drink replacing the gin. Gin was bought for so cheep, but was a disgrace to the English people. People turned to black tea. The expensive tea was more preferred and was bought for its taste, and its essential virtue. The good tea cost at least 60S a pound. The cheapest sort one could legally buy cost 7s a pound. That is about the amount of money one made in a week worth of wages. Just across the Channel or the North Sea the cost was 2s a pound and the inferior for much less. The free traders made a profit of 350 per cent and they weren’t slow to begin this sort of game with other people. This resulted in publicized tea as nothing else could have done, and the illegal sale of the tea flourished and accounted for two-thirds of the tea drunk in England had been smuggled. (The great tea venture, 29-3