Note F — PART I. WINES AND SPIRITS.

According to the testimony of the author of “Wine and Spirit Adulterators Unmasked” the profits of the wine and spirit compounders are so great, and the chance of the detection of their frauds and impositions on the public and the revenue is almost so impossible, that many of them are to be found “vieing with the nobility of the land in the splendour of their equipages and expenditure.” He mentions one gin-shop-keeper (a worthy in the neighbourhood of St. Luke’s) who “drives his family to church, on a Sunday, in his carriage and four.” Another, who has a “richly ornamented state bed.” A third, who is to be found lolling “on an ottoman, in a French dressing-gown.” And he adds, that it is usual to give from four to six thousand guineas for the good will of a gin-shop which has an unexpired lease of eighteen or twenty years, with the drawback of the purchaser being quite at the mercy of the magistrates as to the renewal of his license.