Note K — PART I. WINES AND SPIRITS.

On this subject, Mr. J. D. Williams, the Editor of Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries, has rendered no trifling service to society, by his petition, presented to the House of Commons, by the Marquess of Blandford, on June 17th, 1830; in which he prayed the appointment of fit and competent persons for the digestment and simplification of, or, in the emphatical language of Lord Bacon, for “the choice and tender business of reducing and harmonizing,” the hybrid and confused state of the law. As he justly said, “no useful and beneficial amendment or amelioration can reasonably be expected; but the Statute Book will still continue to be disgraced with enactments which will be at variance with common sense, the first principles of justice, and even nullify the intent and purport of the enactments themselves, while the concoction of laws is entrusted to others than persons endowed with a spirit of comprehensive knowledge, great enlightenment, enlarged and liberal understandings, and who are acquainted with the nature of the subjects on which they presume to legislate.” The instances which that gentleman adduced in his well intended petition of “the great and singular blunders” as to “erroneous conclusions in the first principles of science,” committed by some of our law-makers are really amusing—if any honest man can derive amusement from his country’s injury and degradation.