In the adulteration of spirituous liquors, the advertising and placarding compounder exerts equal ingenuity and fraud, and obtains an equally lucrative traffic as from wines. The “Curious old soft flavoured Cogniac, ten years old,” of those nefarious dealers, is compounded of Spanish or Bourdeaux brandy, neutral flavoured rum, rectified spirits, British brandy, British brandy bitters, cherry-laurel-water, extract of almond cake, extract of capsicums, or of grains of paradise, burnt sugar or colouring matter. But more generally that “_medicinal_” compound British brandy is palmed on the public, for real Cogniac brandy. This diabolical farrago of mischievous ingredients, which was held forth to the public by interested individuals concerned in the undertaking, as calculated “entirely to supersede the use of Cogniac brandy,” and “likely to prove of great benefit to the _health_ and _comfort_ of the poorer and middling classes of society,” is compounded of oil of vitriol, vinegar, nitrum dulce, tincture of raisin stones, tinctura japonica, cherry-laurel-water, extracts of capsicums or of grains of paradise, orris-root, cassia-buds, bitter almond meal, colouring matter, &c. from which enumeration of “_neat_” articles it appears that this “almost superior brandy to Cogniac,” as its modest manufacturers term it, is a slow poison, and equally deleterious in its effects, if not more so, than that vile composition—“cheap gin.” That this is not an unfounded insinuation against “the pure and unadulterated” article, sold, no doubt, “at astonishingly low prices, and for ready money,” will appear from the clear statement of the process of each manufacture given by the author of The Wine and Spirit Adulterators Unmasked, pages 179 and 198. “British brandy,” says the honest Unmasker, “is _composed_ of drugs, gin only _flavoured_ by them. In the manufacture of gin, the ingredients are put into the still, with a spirit which has been previously rectified, and the condensed evaporation which is derived from the whole constitutes the article gin. In the preparation, however, of British brandy, the mixture is made without any process through a still, being compounded more like a quack doctor’s nostrum. The only part of the manufacture wherein distillation is concerned, consists merely in rectifying either rum or malt whiskey, to deprive them of their essential oils, so that they may be reduced to a state as tasteless as possible, and thereby more readily receive the spurious flavours intended to be imparted to them.