the purpose of giving them the Madeira flavour, and
sending them to foreign markets as the produce of the island, is very
erroneous. Although smuggling is openly carried on, and to an extent
that ought to set at rest so fallacious an opinion, any one acquainted
with this island must be aware of the utter impossibility of
introducing foreign wines with a view to exporting them again as
native produce; for, in the first place, the whole of the inhabitants
would be likely to resist such an attempt, from a conviction that the
introduction would militate against their own interests, and from the
obvious apprehension that the increased quantity as well as the
inferior quality of the adulterated wines, would injure the character
and reduce the price of their own.

The great increase too, which it would occasion in the amount sent out
of the island, would render it very difficult for the speculators in
the spurious wines, to avoid detection. It is, therefore, much more
reasonable to suppose, that these mixtures take place in the markets
to which the wines are sent: the great demand for them tempting the
persons engaged in the traffic, to embark in an imposition which has
had the effect of deteriorating the wines so materially, that at last
they began to lose their previous character, to get out of fashion,
and, consequently, to fall off in demand as well as in price. This
system of intermixing different wines, to swell the quantity of some
favourite wine, is known to prevail to a great extent in those of
France and Portugal. The Clarets of the London market, are principally
prepared for the purpose, and, in the transit, lose much of the pure
nature of the original production: and the quantity of adulterated
Port that is sold in England is almost incredible. It is also a well
known fact, that there is more Tokay[2] sold on the Continent and in
England, in one year, than the limited space where it is grown, on the
mountains of Hungary, could produce in twenty years.

But there is also, independently of this vitiation to which the wines
are liable, another cause for the inferior quality of those wines
which are really the produce of the islands. A few Englishmen, and
other foreigners, of a grade very different from that of the
respectable English merchants who have been long established here, hit
upon the expedient of exporting wines instead of attending to the
business which they had originally established on the island. They
t