A president of an English Court of Sessions also complained that
tea was driving out beer, and indirectly injuring the farmer, in
whose cottage, he omitted to say, the tea canister had begun to
occupy a place of honor, despite the lessened demand for his
malt.

In 1745, the British tea tax was reduced to 1 shilling (25 cents)
per pound, together with 25 per cent of the gross price. The
selling price immediately dropped, and British consumption in
1846 rose to 2,358,589 lbs. The use of tea has often been checked
by excessive duties or excise tax. From 1784 to 1787 British
consumption rose from five million pounds to seventeen millions
of pounds, consequent upon a reduction of duties. Twenty years
after, under the imposition of exorbitant duties, British
consumption was only nineteen and one quarter millions of pounds.

It was in those early years of the nineteenth century that tea
firmly and permanently established itself in the humbler
households of England. Its economical prominence elicited from
William Cobbett, the economist and pugnacious editor, a
declaration that from eleven to twelve pounds of tea constituted
the average annual indulgence of a cottager's family, at a cost
of eight shilling for black and 12 shillings for green tea ($2 to
$3) per pound, which was doubtless an over-estimate. And we must
bear in mind that tea in those days was sold by the ounce,
measured into the teapot by the grain, and was steeped until
every vestige of flavor, savory or bitter, had been extracted
from the precious leaves.