1827 Wine and spirit adulterators unmasked

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shop Advertiser and Placarder, is by making use of the decreases, which daily occur in his stock, between the periods on which his Excise Officer surveys it ; and, as he is not obliged to render any account of such decreases, or, if in any particular article the officer should find no decrease from the last stock (although it should be well known to him that a portion of it had been sold), why a decrease in that article should not appear, the facilities for avoiding any detection of adulterating practices are great indeed. With the cheap advertiser, however, possessed only of a Wholesale License, which does not allow him to send out a less quantity than two gallons, the case is widely different ; for, not only is every article of Spirits, with its strength, which is sent from his stock, taken an account of, but for any decrease that may appear in that stock, (no matter from what cause,*) beyond five gallons per cent, he is subject * One of the first convictions that took place under this regu- lation, was, I believe, with a Wine Merchant who had a large con- nexion in the navy, and who pleaded (on a decrease of more than five gallons per cent, being found in his stock of spirits) that he had been treating a number of his naval customers with punch, &c. but as the commissioners did not think he possessed a sufficient number to cause the decrease, his plea was rejected : what makes the circumstance exceedingly singular, was his having been one of the persons who proposed and assisted in the framing of the Act. The object of entailing a penalty for this offence, was for the pur- pose of protecting the Gin-shop-keeper against the wholesale dealer acting as a retailer ; but as the former has no difficulty with his decreases, (although having a wholesale license in addition to his other), as he has only to account for them as having been oc-