: but even
admitting this as a palliation, yet they form only one department of an
art which includes other processes of a tendency absolutely criminal.

Several well-authenticated facts have convinced me that the adulteration
of wine with substances deleterious to health, is certainly practised
oftener than is, perhaps, suspected; and it would be easy to give some
instances of very serious effects having arisen from wines contaminated
with deleterious substances, were this a subject on which I meant to
speak. The following statement is copied from the Monthly Magazine for
March 1811, p. 188.

"On the 17th of January, the passengers by the Highflyer coach, from the
north, dined, as usual, at Newark. A bottle of Port wine was ordered; on
tasting which, one of the passengers observed that it had an unpleasant
flavour, and begged that it might be changed. The waiter took away the
bottle, poured into a fresh decanter half the wine which had been
objected to, and filled it up from another bottle. This he took into the
room, and the greater part was drank by the passengers, who, after the
coach had set out towards Grantham, were seized with extreme sickness;
one gentleman in particular, who had taken more of the wine than the
others, it was thought would have died, but has since recovered. The
half of the bottle of wine sent out of the passengers' room, was put
aside for the purpose of mixing negus. In the evening, Mr. Bland, of
Newark, went into the hotel, and drank a glass or two of wine and water.
He returned home at his usual hour, and went to bed; in the middle of
the night he was taken so ill, as to induce Mrs. Bland to send for his
brother, an apothecary in the town; but before that gentleman arrived,
he was dead. An inquest was held, and the jury, after the fullest
enquiry, and the examination of the surgeons by whom the body was
opened, returned a verdict of--_Died by Poison._"

The most dangerous adulteration of wine is by some preparations of lead,
which possess the property of stopping the progress of acescence of
wine, and also of rendering white wines, when muddy, transparent. I have
good reason to state that lead is certainly employed for this purpose.
The effect is very rapid; and there appears to be no other method known,
of rapidly recovering ropy wines. Wine merchants persuade themselves
that the minute quantity of lead employed for that purpose is perfectly
harmless, and that no atom of lead remains in t