will be
shewn hereafter.[48]

The author[49] of a Practical Treatise on Brewing, which has run
through eleven editions, after having stated the various ingredients for
brewing porter, observes, "that however much they may surprise, however
pernicious or disagreeable they may appear, he has always found them
requisite in the brewing of porter, and he thinks they must invariably
be used by those who wish to continue the taste, flavour, and appearance
of the beer.[50] And though several Acts of Parliament have been passed
to prevent porter brewers from using many of them, yet the author can
affirm, from experience, he could never produce the present flavoured
porter without them.[51] The intoxicating qualities of porter are to be
ascribed to the various drugs intermixed with it. It is evident some
porter is more heady than other, and it arises from the greater or less
quantity of stupifying ingredients. Malt, to produce intoxication, must
be used in such large quantities as would very much diminish, if not
totally exclude, the brewer's profit."

The practice of adulterating beer appears to be of early date. By an
Act so long ago as Queen Anne, the brewers are prohibited from mixing
_cocculus indicus_, or any unwholesome ingredients, in their beer, under
severe penalties: but few instances of convictions under this act are to
be met with in the public records for nearly a century. To shew that
they have augmented in our own days, we shall exhibit an abstract from
documents laid lately before Parliament.[52]

These will not only amply prove, that unwholesome ingredients are used
by fraudulent brewers, and that very deleterious substances are also
vended both to brewers and publicans for adulterating beer, but that the
ingredients mixed up in the brewer's enchanting cauldron are placed
above all competition, even with the potent charms of Macbeth's witches:

"Root of hemlock, digg'd i' the dark,
+ + + + +
+ + + + +
For a charm of pow'rful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble;
Double, double, toil and trouble,
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble."

The fraud of imparting to porter and ale an intoxicating quality by
narcotic substances, appears to have flourished during the period of the
late French war; for, if we examine the importation lists of drugs, it
will be noticed that the quantities of cocculus indicus imported in a
given