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last mentioned are known to be highly poisonous. Salpetre, salt prunella, or common salt, mixed with wheat or bean flour, jalap, the fiery liquid called spirit of Maranta, bruised green copperas, lime, marble dust, oyster shells, egg shells, sulphate of lime, hartshorn shavings, the herb bennet, or common avens, nutgalls, and the subcarbonates of potash and soda, are used to prevent acidity. Sweet flag, coriander-seeds, carraways, orange peel, orange peas, long pepper, capsicum, grains of paradise, have been employed for flavor and pungency. Coculus indicus, bitter bean, nux vomica, and opium, which are strong poisons, are used for the purpose of producing intoxication. Here the reader will perceive how avarice has invented, and the most heartless cupidity has studied, to enrich itself at the expense of the health, and lives, and morals of the people. If alcohol of itself is a poison, here we have it saturated or supplanted by the most deleterious drugs. From Parliamentary Returns we find that some years the duty paid to government for

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The reader will also observe, that the consumption of these articles, which are chiefly employed in manufacturing beer and porter, has of late years increased rather than diminished. NuxVomica, for example, which is a horrid poison, paid in 1830, £191 duty, but in 1833, it paid £517 15s.; Coculus Indicus paid in 1829, £139 15s., but in 1833, £569 19s. 5d. ; thus the instruments of disorganization, demoralization, and death, were never more used than at present. Increased appetite and demand afford those who prey upon the health and morals of the people such an ample opportunity to indulge their nefarious and deadly practices.

Wines and spirits, we know, are adulterated to a greater extent than beer. We have already mentioned the horrid death of the wine seller, who was smitten with insufferable remorse, at the thought of the many that he had murdered by his devices in adulterating wine. I heard a medical man very lately recom.

mend port wine to a sick lady, and he told me that he did so because the arsenic in the wine would be useful in her complaint; however, he did not cure her by the poison, though I am happy to say, that in her case, total abstinence has effected a perfect cure, and therefore, succeeded in a disease in which all the doctors failed. A respectable individual states, that “in the Isle of Sheppy many persons are employed in picking up copperas stones from the sea-beach, which being taken to a manufactory, copperas is extracted, and then shipped to Oporto, to be sold to the vine-dressers and wine merchants, and by them is mixed with the port wine, to give it its peculiar astringent quality.

We have testimonies the most unquestionable, that modern wines are manufactured and adulterated to an awful extent. "The Vintner's and Licensed Victuallers' Guide" will furnish any one who will consult it with the most shocking directions on this subject. One of the most poisonous ingredients which these adulterators use is lead; this appears to have been rather an old practice: in the year 1696, several persons in the Duchy of Wirtemberg were poisoned, in consequence of drinking wine adulterated with ceruse, or white lead. A disease called the "lead colic" raged in Poitou in the sixteenth century, for upwards of sixty years, and is now well known to have been occasioned by the abominable adulteration of wine with lead. Towards the end of the 17th century nearly every individual of three regiments in Jamaica was afflicted with colic, arising from the lead that was mixed with the rum. The adulteration of cider with lead has before now produced the lead colic in England to an awful extent.

It seems that lead has the peculiar power of correcting acescence. In France, and especially in Paris, large quantities of sour wine, sold for the purpose of making vinegar, have been converted into wine again by means of litharge, or a species of red lead. Brandy is often rendered pale by the same destructive ingredient. Geneva has been known to prove fatal, in consequence of its admixture with" sugar of lead." In 1811, all the passengers of the Highflyer coach, who dined and drank wine at Newcastle on January 17th, were taken ill with extreme sick

ness, and one gentleman who had taken more wine than the rest, was brought almost to the grave; and a Mr. Bland of Newark, who drank some negus, which was made from this very wine, was taken ill soon after, and actually died before medical aid arrived; and on the inquest being held, the jury returned a verdict of" Died by Poison.”

The "Vintners' Guide" contains directions for clearing cloudy or muddy wines, and sugar of lead is one of the ingredients recommended; lead, in its worst form, has been found in champagne; and persons have died, or become paralytic, from drinking white wine, which had been poisoned with lead. It is well known that sugar of lead, ceruse, or white lead, litharge, or a species of red lead are mixed with acids or sharp tasted wines to remove their acidity. The following recipe for making and doctoring wines may be found in "Wine guides." For Port-take of good cider 4 gallons, of the juice of red beet 2 quarts, brandy 2 quarts, logwood 4 ounces, rhatany root bruised a pound; first infuse the logwood and rhatany root in brandy, and a gallon of cider, for one week, then strain off the liquor, and mix the other ingredients; keep it in a cask for a month, when it will be fit for

use.

A chimical analysis of a bottle of port has produced the following results :-spirits of wine 3 ounces, cider 14 ounces, sugar 11 ounce, alum 2 scruples, tartaric acid 1 scruple, strong decoction of logwood 4 ounces.

If a butt of sherry is too high in color, take a quart of warm sheep or lamb's blood, mix it with the wine, and when thoroughly fine draw it off, when you will find the wine as pale as necessary.

To color Claret.-Take as many as you please of damascenes, or black sloes, and stew them with some dark colored wine, and as much sugar as will make it into a sirup. This will color either claret or port.

Frenchmen have been known to purchase large quantities of Herefordshire cider, and manufacture it into fine sparkling champagne.

Bitter almonds are used to give a nutty flavor to wine ;sweet briar, orris-root, clary, cherry laurel water, and elder

flowers, form the bouquet of highly flavored wines; alum renders meagre wine bright;—brazil wood, cake of pressed elder berries, and bilberries, render pale faint colored port of a deep purple: oak saw dust, and husks of filberts, give additional astringency to unripe red wines;—the crust of port wines, which is supposed to be an unquestionable evidence of age, is often produced by a saturated solution of cream of tartar, colored with brazil wood or cochineal.

The following table of the exports of wine from Oporto to the Channel Islands, and of imports from the Channel Islands to London, may give the reader some idea of the extent to which the manufacture of wine is carried:

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According to the Custom-House books of Oporto, for the year 1812, 135 pipes and 20 hogsheads were shipped for Guernsey : in the same year there were landed at the London Docks, 2,545 pipes and 162 hogsheads, from that Island, reported to be port

wine.

If the reader should require more facts upon this subject, he may find an abundance in Bacchus, on the adulteration of wines; and as he reads them, he must blush for those Christians who dare insinuate that the deadly wines of modern times are the same as those referred to in the Sacred Volume. "The wine that cheereth the heart of man," that our Lord made at the marriage of Cana, or that he used at the first sacrament, could not have been charged with 24 per cent. of alcohol, because distilled spirits was then unknown; nor can we believe that it was made

out of cider, logwood or lead; and the wines being different, the argument from Scripture can have no weight with any reflecting mind.

Thus on whatever aspect or side we look at this question, we see the reasonableness, propriety, advantage, and duty of total abstinence. The nourishment of malt liquor is a delusion; numbers of medical men have set their faces against its use. I know a physician, who, with strange inconsistency, recommends weak brandy and water, but who, most unequivocally condemns beer and cider. Brewers hardly ever drink even their own good ales. Several spirit merchants tremble to drink their own gin, and many wine sellers know that there is death in their wines. In the evidence before the House of Commons, it was stated that medical men have, in several cases, destroyed and ruined their patients by recommending them to drink spirits. Let the world then awake from the lethargy into which it has been thrown, by these infatuating and maddening drinks; let science, let religion do their duty; then the accursed spell will be broken, and man shall be as prosperous, as happy, as enlightened and - moral, as the high privileges and blessings he can command declare that he ought to be.

Some persons who have adopted total abstinence, have immediately begun to eat a great deal more than they did formerly, to make up for the beer and wine that they have abandoned, and in a short time have become ill, and thus have said, that total abstinence did not agree with them. And of course it did not under these circumstances, because they exchanged drinking for gluttony, and soon began to suffer from plethora or indigestion. Now it is found from much observation, that a tetotaler can live on less food than a moderate drinker. He suffers less from absorption and exhaustion, what he eats is better digested, and therefore his system does not demand so much nutriment; and if he eats more because he drinks less, he will suffer in some way or other; those who by drunkenness have lost all appetite for food will, on becoming tetotalers, have a good appetite return in a short time; but those who feel the cravings which moderate drinking occasions will, on practicing total abstinence, find that they can do with less food than formerly.

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