102 Notes of the Month [JULY, 



adopted ; the cry is that the audience have no question to consider but 

 the theatrical ability of the performer ; and the consequence is, that in 

 the memory of the stage the life of actresses has never been so openly 

 vicious. At this moment almost the entire number of the principal 

 actresses are public scandals. Of the foreign actresses and opera people 

 we say no more, than that the system of making no inquiry as to the 

 moral conduct of performers, has produced its full effects, there, the whole 

 number of them being perfectly understood to have no scruple of any 

 kind. In England it had been otherwise. But now we have a set of 

 people puffed and panegyrized as delicate, delightful, divine, and so 

 forth, for whom six months' bread and water and the treadmill in the 

 House of Correction, would be the true regimen and the fitting reward. 



" The votaries of Port wine will be alarmed at hearing that the trade 

 which has so long subsisted between this country and Portugal is seri- 

 ously called in question, It, however, seems very clear that the Methuen 

 treaty, as it has now for many years been acted upon, is any thing but 

 beneficial to England. An overgrown company governs the wine trade, 

 and a monopoly, odious in itself, and fatal alike to the interests of im- 

 porters and consumers, is said to have long exercised its baneful 

 influence." 



We differ from our contemporary. The votaries of Port wine can 

 feel no alarm on the subject, though the votaries of sloe juice at the price 

 of Port wine, may. Mr. Villars's speech told the House of Commons 

 only what every man who had inquired into the subject knew already, 

 that an immense quantity of " Port wine" was no more grown in 

 Portugal than Madeira is grown in Middlesex. The whole trade is a 

 process of fabrication. The Oporto Company being monopolists, and 

 of course taking the advantages that all monopolists take, in the first 

 place sell their good wine at ten times its value, and in the next mix 

 their good wine with their bad, whicli they thus sell at fifty times its 

 value. But the process does not end there. This medicated wine is 

 again mixed and medicated in Guernsey, and every where that it is ware- 

 housed before it comes to the table of the English consumer, a mixture of 

 Portuguese brandy, British sloe juice, and American dye stuffs. Such 

 is the history developed by Accum, and now more fully opened by 

 Mr. Villars. And for this we pay six times the price that the best 

 claret w r ould cost, if the foolish Methuen treaty were abandoned, and 

 the Portuguese wine makers were left to make their market on fail- 

 terms. 



We should not have a drop of Port wine the less, if we wished for it. 

 The only difference being, that we should have it six times as cheap and 

 infinitely better. The Portuguese nation, too, would be better pleased 

 by the abolition of the monopoly, for the wine market is now restricted 

 to a certain district and a small corporation ; it would then be thrown 

 open to the country. But the true question is with ourselves. Is it 

 consistent with common sense or rational economy to pay six times as 

 much for a bad material as for a good, for the heady and unhealthful 

 wines of Portugal, as for the fine vintage of France ? The old notion 

 of reciprocity is narrow and childish. Our statesmen tell us that the 

 duties must lie on French wines until the French take our manufactures 

 in return. But what treaty will bind nations unless their interests coin- 

 cide ? We want the wines of France. France does not want our 

 woollens or our cutlery or our smoke-jacks. Why then should she be 



