The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1839-09-10 00:00:00

" OUSE OF LORDS, A. 1628, 4 Car., die lunge, 23Q
Februarii.—Whereas complaint was, this day, made
to the House, that merchant strangers have brought into this
kingdom divers Wines of the growth of France, which they
have sophisticated with unwholesome roots and other un-
wholesome things, and do utter the same for French and
Rheni.sh Wines ; it is this day ordered, by the Lords Spiritual
and Temporal, in the High Court of Parliament assembled,
that the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London shall, by vir-
tue of this order, have authority (and they are hereby r ired
to make diligent search and inquiry after all sophistic , ar-
tificial, and falsified Wines, within the City of Lo n ; and
that they shall break in pieces all such vessels w h, either
now or hereafter, they shall find containing su artificial,
or falsified Wines, and shall let out the said nes into the
streets, to the end that none of his Majesty' ving subjects
may receive any prejudice at all by them h eafter." Such
was the wise and energetic mandate issued, upwards of 200
years ago, by that illustrious branch of the Legislature, which
has, for ages, stood prominently forward as the bulwark of
the British constitution ; and the decree amply attests the
summary punishment then dealt out to panderers in dishonest
traffic, who catered their gains by infamy or injustice. It
would be well, indeed, were such a procedure to be acted
upon in the present day, when the Parliamentary returns
abound with the convictions of persons detected mixing Cape
with other Wines; Spirits with Wines, Drugs with Wines,
bribing Excise-officers, mixing Port with Cape, and other
adulterations : and amongst the various stratagems resorted
to for the sale of spurious Ports aid other Wines, the most
rife and extensive is through the medium of fictitious auctions,
fictitious, because, at almost every sale of this kind, there are
persons in attendance hired by the auctioneer to bid for the
lots put up • and will it be credited that the Excise are
suffered by law to tolerate this disgraceful practice ?—for
the auctioneer has only to give notice that he intends to
have either one, ten, or fifty minions in the sale-room, as
pretnded buyers, and whatever goods they make mock pur-
chases of are exempted from auction duty. It is full time
that this system of entrapping the unsuspecting, and delud-
ing the public, should be made known; and since it is notor-
ious that private dwelling-houses are often hired for the pur-
pose of hatching these auctions, and that auctioneers in
veigle attention to them by professing them to be collections
of noblemen going abroad, deceased gentlemen, or officers of
rank, surely no one of common sense ought to risk his health,
or that of his family, by encouraging such specious and deep-
laid impositions. British Wines are sold at auction as foreign,
and samples of good W Ines areprodnced, although the real par-
cels are trash, which the unfortunate buyercannot drink, nor
even use for kitchen purposes : but he has no redress. The
cognizance of these and many other flagrant abuses impera-
tively demanded some remedy, and that devised by Messrs.
Wye and Co., approved and sanctioned as it has been by the
unanimous voice of the phalanx of rank and consequence
throughout the kingdom, namely, the bottling of Port Wines
at Oporto, is admitted to be the only one which could infal-
libly secure the unsullied Port \Vines of the Alto Douro.
The Delme, the Anne, and the Red Port, have just arrived
in the port of London, from Oporto, with the 39th, 40th, and
41st consignments of! WYE'S PORT WINES, bottled at
Oporto, to the sole consignees, W. S. WALSH and CO. 56,
Berwick-street, adjoining Oxford-street, London.