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 the country would not be put to the expense of making laws one day which are to be repealed the next, and there might appear some just pretension for the high-sounding titles of “English Justinians,” and “heaven-born legislators,” with which a portion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.
As my printer tells me that a few lines are wanting to complete this page, and being desirous to give my readers all I can afford for their money, a word or two on the legislative mania which seems to have taken hold of some honourable members “of the noblest assembly of freemen in the world,” may not be misplaced. And for the sake of brevity, I shall adduce, as an example, the memorable attempt to modify the Quarantine Laws on the advice, testimony, and experience of the renowned Dr. M’Lean. When arguments being taken as facts, and the absurdities of reasoning as the evidence of experience, the whims and reveries of that gentleman, who was described by one (a member of St. Stephen’s) of the anti-contagionists as “one of those extraordinary persons who will be pointed out by the finger of the future historian,” would have received the stamp and authority of law, and we should have had the blessing of plague being as common in our houses as measles, coughs or colds, had not “the ignorance of those who attempt to mislead the public, and the indiscretion of those who are inclined to believe them,” been exposed and refuted by the late Dr. Gooch, in his invaluable paper “Is the Plague a Contagious Disease?” which appeared at the time (anno 1825), in The Quarterly Review, and is now appended to his Account of Female Diseases.
PART II.
A Word or Two, by way of Introduction.
I have told thee, friend Bull, while discoursing of the little slips and sleights of hand in use among thy good and ancient friends, the wine and spirit dealer, the gin-shop keeper, the brewer, and the publican, that thou wouldst be satisfied that “Death was not only in the Bottle,” but that thou wouldst find that the complaint of the sons of the prophet, “There is Death in the Pot” ought not to have been confined to the narrow limits of Gilgal, but that it extends in all its operations to the illicit doings in thy own “dear native little island”—the “land of the good and the wise.” I shall now proceed to unfold to thee this part of my duty, and then I apprehend that thou wilt lay aside thy usual scepticism and incredulity, and acknowledge that I have made out to thy satisfaction the truth of my horrific title “Deadly Adulteration and Slow Poisoning; or, Disease and Death in the Pot and the Bottle.” I shall begin with the “Staff of Life.”
SECTION I.
Bread and Flour.
Good bread is light, porous, and spongy; of a sweet nutty smell; and when pressed with the finger is tough and resists the pressure like sponge, recovering with a spring its original texture as soon as the finger is removed: if any fracture appears, it is a sign of adulteration. The more numerous and large the cells or little holes are in it, the more perfectly is the bread made, and the better adapted for digestion.