The foregoing “_exposé_” of trickery and fraud, and the shameful latitude and extensive means afforded designing and iniquitous men, of practising their roguery on the credulity and folly of the public, as well as to the loss of the revenue, evidently shows that our present system of excise-laws is defective and absurd: indeed, it is disgraced by the most perfect anomalies; for, while the brewer and vender of spices, &c. are subjected to the strictest survey of the excise, and the frauds and adulterations used in those trades are punished, (when detected, though it must be acknowledged that that happy consummation of justice is rather of rare occurrence even with those sophisticators,) in the most prompt and efficient manner, the venders and compounders of “seductive poison,” in the form of drams, are allowed to manufacture and sell their deleterious inventions to an enormous extent, and with an effrontery disgraceful to civilized society. But, perhaps, the old artful plea of the “immense wealth,” and “the great value of the property,” of “the large capitalists” engaged in the nefarious trade, (the worst and most futile of all pretentions,) have entitled the “deputations” of wine and spirit dealers and compounders and distillers that have, from time to time, waited on the Chancellors of the Exchequer, to “undoubted consideration;”[F] and where the worthies have been detected (a chance which but seldom happens) in their iniquitous practices a prudent private compromise, or sum-total-fine, for the offence and the expenses of the Excise-solicitor, “have shrouded the offenders and their misdeeds in impenetrable secrecy from the public eye.” Another lame and false doctrine that prevails in “_government logic_” is, that where extensive concerns, whether brewery, distillery, wine-factories, or quack-medicine-factories, yield an important contribution to the revenue, no strict scrutiny needs to be adopted in regard to the quality of the article from which such contribution is raised, provided the excise and customs do not suffer by the fraud. “But,” as that intrepid advocate of fair dealing, Mr. Accum, forcibly and justly observes, “the principles of the constitution afford no sanction to this preference, and the true interests of the country require that it should be abolished; for a tax dependent on fraud must be at best precarious, and must be, sooner or later, diminished by the irresistible diffusion of knowledge. Sound policy requires that the law should be impartially enforced in all cases; and if its penalties were extended to abuses of which it does not now take cognizance, there is no doubt that the revenue would be abundantly benefited.” “O England! model to thy inward greatness, Like little body with a mighty heart, What would’st thou do that honour would thee do, Were all thy children kind and natural?”