The Distillery Act of 1825 requires notice. By the enactment of 1825, no person can obtain a _licence_ for conducting a distillery, unless he occupies a tenement of the value of 20_l._ a year, pays parish rates, and resides within a quarter of a mile of a market town containing 500 inhabited houses. Before obtaining a licence, the amount of which is 10_l._, he must lodge with the collector, or other officer of excise, an entry or registry of his premises, the several apartments and utensils, specifying the contents of the vessels and the purposes for which they are intended; and every such room and utensil must be properly labelled with its appropriate name and object. With the registry must be delivered a drawing, or description of the construction, use, and course of every fixed pipe in the distillery, as well as of all casks and communications therewith connected. Pipes for the conveyance of worts or wash must be painted red, those for low wines or feints, blue; those for spirits, white; for water, black. No still can be licensed of a less content than 400 gallons, nor can the distiller make spirits at the same time from different materials. The distiller must give notice of the gravity at which he intends to make his wort. These are specimens only of the conditions imposed. Before this enactment, distillation was confined to a few capitalists; but, with a view of encouraging a fair competition in the trade, and inducing the people to take the spirits directly from the distillers, the Act was passed. The drink temperature was maintained throughout all classes of society. Charles Knight gives an apt description of a Christmas in London in 1824:-- The out-door aspects of London enjoyment at Christmas were not unobserved by me. Honestly to speak, it was a dismal spectacle. In every broad thoroughfare, and in every close alley, there was drunkenness abroad; not shamefaced drunkenness, creeping in maudlin helplessness to its home by the side of the scolding wife, but rampant, insolent, outrageous drunkenness. No decent woman even in broad daylight could at the holiday seasons dare to walk alone in the Strand or Pall Mall. The stronger spirituous liquors were all the rage; and it was under the impression that by making beer, &c., more readily accessible, there would be less demand for the fire-water, that the Beerhouse Act was passed, of which we shall soon speak. But before doing so, let us recall the names of one or two who ranged themselves on the side of temperance. James Montgomery writes:--