In the above detail of adulterations in the public brewery of this country, no personality is intended in the tone of reprehension assumed on the subject; the remarks are intended to be applied only to “the most worthless part of the trade, to such as disgrace the name of brewer, by sporting with the lives of their fellow creatures for lucre’s sake.” Those odious and detestable wretches deserve the severest castigations, and every member of the community should lend his hearty co-operation to their exposure and punishment. But while it is the duty of every man whom nature has gifted with a heart capable of feeling for his fellow creatures, to expose the monsters who secretly poison the human race, it must be admitted that the very heavy and injudicious taxation to which brewers are subject has compelled even many of the more conscientious of the trade to have recourse to measures which are not quite agreeable to the dictates of honesty, and to draw immense lengths of wort from the least possible quantity of malt, so that the liquor is neither of a nutritive nor a relishing quality. But the error in this case arises from the same cause as it does in that of wines—the incompetency of the persons (who were either the favourites, the dependants, or the retainers of the existing ministry of the day) appointed to frame the statutes regulating those trades; and, laughable to say, those precious legislators have prohibited the use of articles which are not only innoxious, but occasionally advantageous.[K] In the statute of Charles the Second, which regulates the management of foreign wines, the blunder is singular; by that act several substances are forbidden to be mixed with wine, which, in themselves, are not only innocuous, but are highly conducive to its purity and right preservation, and give it the necessary brightness and perfection! Oh, Bull, when will thy law-makers and law-concocters learn _a little_ of that old-fashioned and much neglected commodity,—COMMON SENSE. Were the same good sense and knowledge of the subject, and of the condition of society, indicated by them as are displayed by the more unassuming but efficient department of the state machinery—the dispensers of our laws (of course I cannot be mistaken to mean the justices of the peace!) the country would not be put to the expense of making laws one day which are to be repealed the next, and there might appear some just pretension for the high-sounding titles of “English Justinians,” and “heaven-born legislators,” with which a portion of the periodical press is idly and continually bespattering certain members of the executive department of the government.