“As many people place reliance on the genuineness of wines purchased in the Docks, and think that such purchases are more exempt from fraud and imposition than if obtained from the dealer’s shop or vaults, and that they will have them ‘neat as imported,’ it is necessary to caution them to be on their guard in respect of the persons with whom they deal. Inferior articles, false descriptions, substitutions for the one selected, and various other peculations, take place there as frequently as is the case when wines are purchased at the dealer’s shop, &c. Other impositions of as flagrant a nature consist in transferring wines of a most inferior sort into pipes recently emptied, and originally filled with wine of the best vintages and flavour; and as the outside of the cask bears the marks of the foreign houses of character, from whose vintages the wines contained in the casks were furnished, this fraud is found to turn to very good account. By delusions of this kind, the most detestable trash ever vended under the name of wine is frequently foisted on purchasers. But if this statement is not sufficient to satisfy those who fondly suppose that by making their purchases in the ‘Docks’ that they will always have their expectations of obtaining unadulterated wine fulfilled, they should recollect that the owners of wines in the ‘Dock’ are at liberty to mix them in whatever manner and proportions they please, provided they come under one denomination as to colour and pay the same duty. These remarks will, I trust, satisfy my readers that ‘an extensive range of counting-houses,’ ‘numerous clerks employed’ and professions of ‘the high character of the house,’ should not supersede the necessity of making a little inquiry as to the fair dealing and integrity of the vender.”
The foregoing “exposé” of trickery and fraud, and the shameful latitude and extensive means afforded designing and iniquitous men, of practising their roguery on the credulity and folly of the public, as well as to the loss of the revenue, evidently shows that our present system of excise-laws is defective and absurd: indeed, it is disgraced by the most perfect anomalies; for, while the brewer and vender of spices, &c. are subjected to the strictest survey of the excise, and the frauds and adulterations used in those trades are punished, (when detected, though it must be acknowledged that that happy consummation of justice is rather of rare occurrence even with those sophisticators,) in the most prompt and efficient manner, the venders and compounders of “seductive poison,” in the form of drams, are allowed to manufacture and sell their deleterious inventions to an enormous extent, and with an effrontery disgraceful to civilized society. But, perhaps, the old artful plea of the “immense wealth,” and “the great value of the property,” of “the large capitalists” engaged in the nefarious trade, (the worst and most futile of all pretentions,) have entitled the “deputations” of wine and spirit dealers and compounders and distillers that have, from time to time, waited on the Chancellors of the Exchequer, to “undoubted consideration;”[F] and where the worthies have been detected (a chance which but seldom happens) in their iniquitous practices a prudent private compromise, or sum-total-fine, for the offence and the expenses of the Excise-solicitor, “have shrouded the offenders and their misdeeds in impenetrable secrecy from the public eye.”
Another lame and false doctrine that prevails in “government logic” is, that where extensive concerns, whether brewery, distillery, wine-factories, or quack-medicine-factories, yield an important contribution to the revenue, no strict scrutiny needs to be adopted in regard to the quality of the article from which such contribution is raised, provided the excise and customs do not suffer by the fraud. “But,” as that intrepid advocate of fair dealing, Mr. Accum, forcibly and justly observes, “the principles of the constitution afford no sanction to this preference, and the true interests of the country require that it should be abolished; for a tax dependent on fraud must be at best precarious, and must be, sooner or later, diminished by the irresistible diffusion of knowledge. Sound policy requires that the law should be impartially enforced in all cases; and if its penalties were extended to abuses of which it does not now take cognizance, there is no doubt that the revenue would be abundantly benefited.”
“O England! model to thy inward greatness,
Like little body with a mighty heart,
What would’st thou do that honour would thee do,
Were all thy children kind and natural?”
Were they all influenced by the same honest, bold, and disinterested motives as the ill-fated Accum, who has been offered a vindictive sacrifice on the altar of trading cupidity and fraud. Every honest man must allow that the expatriation of that gentleman is a disgrace to the country which he has adorned and benefited by his talents, and ought to be deplored as a loss to the real interests of science and humanity.