[E] The respectable author of “The Art of Brewing on Scientific Principles” has the following note, “Spirits vended by retail are all adulterated, and some of them to a dreadful extent. Some months since (his work was published in 1826,) a person having writing to do that would occupy great part of the night, purchased, at a liquor shop, in Newgate-street, half a pint of gin; and, during the night, he drank a goblet-full of grog, which he had made from it. He was seized with most excruciating agony, spasms of the stomach, temporary paralysis, and loss of intellect. These he attributed to some natural cause, and he gave the remainder of the liquor to a person that called on him in the morning. In about an hour that person was similarly affected. This induced inquiry; and it was ascertained that the woman who served the liquor had mistaken the bottle, and had sold half a pint of the fluid intended to prepare the adulterations for sale. The last-mentioned person who partook of the infernal mixture died of its effects.” Similar consequences have occurred from adulterated beer. Among a thousand other instances, see the Coroner’s inquest in the Times Newspaper of the 29th of June, 1829. [F] 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. SECTION II. _The Tests, or Methods of ascertaining the Good or Bad Qualities of Wines and Spirits._