With this tiers-etat (as it was) resided thereafter the
"balance of power," that foundational juste -milieu
which has since become in European diplomacy a
corner-stone.f

10. In the year 1639, by authority of the " Virginia
Assembly" there went out a decree, that all the to-
bacco then standing in cultivated fields should be
dug up and exterminated ; and yet at this day there
are towns and districts under this same jurisdiction
whose sole resource for a livelihood is the tobacco-
plantation and the factory. Twenty-five years from
the above date, in 1664 that is, the " General Court"
of Connecticut ordained as follows : " No person
under the age of 2 1 shall take away Tobacko, until



* Note. This identical party (the Quids, that is to say) are be-
lieved — and reasonably if conjecture be allowed in evidence — to
have been a living impersonation of that metaphysical abstraction
and somewhat dubious entity created by the Schoolmen, the Tc>-
titim Quid.
f The Histoi-y of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker, book
iv-7, concerning the Pipe-Plot.
32



374 Opium.
he hath brought a certificate from ye hands of some
one who is approved of knowledge and skill in
physique that it is useful for him, and furthermore
that he hath a lycense from ye Courte for ye same.
