It is true that wine and malt liquors, and even occasionally spirits, are far from prejudicial, when properly made, and used with discretion; but as it is almost impossible to find them in that state, except when home-made or home-brewed, there is certainly much risk in drinking them. Yet, strange to say, though the stoutest among us has no predilection for the “King of Terrors,” inclination and habit are so strong and seductive, that the greater part of mankind still persevere in habits with a perfect knowledge of their inevitable consequences,—that they are destructive of health and inductive of death. For the purpose of awakening the attention of those who are under this unhappy delusion, is the design of the present publication. The most grateful sensation to a well disposed heart is the salvation of a fellow creature from misery and perdition. I beseech heaven that I may be successful in my undertaking. But the base and iniquitous adulterations of wines and spirits are not the whole of the “illicit doings” of the advertisers and placarders, and their worthy compeers, the commission-men, the wine-hawkers, and the dock wine-merchants. “Among the deceptions practised by this class of dealers,” says the author of Wine and Spirit Adulterators Unmasked, p. 157, and he is no indifferent authority on the subject, “may be reckoned the delivering of a less quantity of wine than is charged for in the invoice, the disposing of a wine with a false description of its being of some particularly fine and noted vintage; the sending of another wine, of an inferior quality, as the one which had been tasted and sold; together with a variety of other peculations. The gin-shop-keepers and advertising dealers in spirits not only give short measure of their adulterated ingredients, but if they sell any thing like the genuine article they dilute it much below (often one hundred per cent.) the legal strength, namely, seventeen per cent. below proof, according to Sykes’s hydrometer.”