1827 Wine and spirit adulterators unmasked

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by being compelled to conduct the wholesale de- partment of his business, separately, and at a certain distance from the place at which his retail trade was carried on ; thus, not a little evidencing the suspicions entertained by Government on the very subject I have been discussing. The Gin-shop- keepers, however, alive to this annihilation of their means of deceiving the public any longer, by a de- putation to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and by representations (the importance of which, to their own individual interests, must be pretty clear to my Readers), procured the obliteration of this obnoxious clause, unanswered by the proper and cor- rect counter-statements, which ought, and could have been made, on the part of the respectable Wine and Spirit Merchant, and which, there can be little doubt, would have had the effect of causing the completion of the Act, in its original form. The following explanation, however, which places the case on its own merits, and as it really stands, will enable my Readers to draw their own conclusions on the points I have submitted to them, with respect to this portion of my subject, and may not perhaps, altogether, be considered uninteresting. The present mode by which a Wholesale Spirit Dealer's stock is taken, is such, as not only to ren- der it impossible for him to adulterate his goods, or by any means to defraud his customers, but even to place needless difficulties in the way of his business, though nothing more be desired by him, than to E