Muslins are not free from sophistication-ingenuity. Poor, thin, rough specimens are rendered stiff, high glazed, and thick with a quantum sufficit of pipe-clay, &c.; sometimes a paper-pulp is spread over the deteriorated article; and the fibres of the cotton which ought to be dressed off, are left in order to hold the composition put in.
Stockings are often rendered stiff and thick to the feet, by bleaching them with brimstone. And coarse woollen cloth receives the addition of large quantities of fuller’s-earth to give it body and closeness; while the right or pressed side is finished off with oil, in order to give the cloth a fine, soft, and smooth appearance. Never choose woollen cloth which is glossy and stiff.
“The frauds committed in the tanning of skins, and their conversion into leather; and in the manufacture of cutlery and jewellery,” says Mr. Accum, “exceed belief.” And I can assure my readers that that gentleman is not mistaken in his assertion; and, had he added that of cabinet wares and silver plate of all sorts, he would not have over-stepped the limits of truth. To those acquainted with the manufacture of silver goods, it is well known that you cannot always be sure that the various costly articles are of the legal standard with which Pride and Vanity, Luxury and Fashion, when they “set up for Gentry and Stylish people,” and have a desire for “shewing off,” gratify their whims and fantastic notions of gentility, and their ambition of “outplating and outdishing” their friends and neighbours. The prosecution instituted some years ago against a “legitimate” son of Crispin for the manufacture of shoes, the soles of which were ingeniously united to the welts by only six stitches in each shoe, while the external parts of the soles exhibited evident traces of a multiplicity of stitches rivalling the number of the stars of the firmament of the heavens in extent and variety, and their exact mathematical precision seemed to display the exertion of the genius of a Euclid, cannot have slipped the recollection of all my readers.
And to complete the climax of sophistication, even the paper on which John gives birth to his “winged words,” and expresses his indignant feelings at the extent and the audacity of the frauds and impositions practised on his good-nature and credulous disposition, is sophisticated. In the manufacture of paper, a large quantity of plaster of Paris is often mixed up with the paper-stuff, instead of its consisting of good linen rags only, and the foreign substance is added to increase the weight of the commodity. Nor is he, when, like ourselves, desirous of having his thoughts and discoveries rendered “enduring for ages,” (monumentum ære perennius,) by having them cast in stereotype, and thus “save a penny,” exempt from the designs and contrivances of sophistication;—the founder deceives him by casting his “words that breathe and thoughts that burn” in a metal as soft and ductile as lollipop. Thus honest Bull is circumvented in all his intents, and surprised and overpowered at every turn by the Genius of Sophistication.
CONCLUSION.
Friend Bull! if thou hast carefully and dispassionately (that is, if thou hast sufficiently divested thy honest mind of its usual scepticism—videlicet, its unwillingness to be convinced against its constitutional prejudices,) read my disclosures, I am willing to believe that thou wilt readily admit that I have established all my allegations of the frauds and impositions to which thou art subject in this sophisticating age, and that I have proved the truth and propriety of the title of my little book, “Disease and Death in the Pot and the Bottle.” What remedy (for a good advocate seldom forgets that prospective part of his duty,) to recommend thee to adopt, in order to free thyself from the knavery and effrontery of the sophisticators, I know not, except, hermetically to close thy jaws so as to prevent the entrance of any of the sophistications into them, or the more pleasurable remedy of preferring a petition to thy “gracious Sovereign,” who “can do no wrong,” praying “the omnipotency of Parliament,”—in its “collective and superlative wisdom” to take thy deplorable case into consideration,” and to devise some means, in the plenitude of its conjoint wisdom, to protect thee and thy “little ones,” in this “land of equal law,” from the arts and devices of slow poisoning. In the success of thy humble and righteous remonstrance believe me, thy fellow sufferer, and “enemy of fraud and villany,” will heartily and sincerely join.
THE AUTHOR.
Postscript.—In reviewing my well-meant, and, I trust, useful denunciations of fraud and villany, I find that I have omitted to speak of false weights and measures. But as the proverb says, better late than never. Not to mention the trick of clapping a piece of weight or other metal underneath the scale in which the commodity to be sold is weighed; commercial balances are frequently misconstructed for fraudulent purposes, by making the arm from which the substance to be weighed is suspended longer than that from which the counterpoise is hung, thereby giving the substance to be weighed a greater leverage.
⁂ Authenticated communications of adulterations thankfully received, and liberally paid for.