Excerpt from The North American Review, Vol. 94

We might fairly parody that famous description of the Brit ish subject as taxed in every article of food, of wear, of amusement, and of daily use, from his cradle to his coffin, and make out an equally strong case in the matter of adulteration. From morning to night he is the subject of perpetual fraud. He shaves himself with an inferior imitation of some high priced soap puts on a coat made of shoddy, and a hat of silk imitation of beaver. He drinks chiccory and beans in his coffee, water in his milk, and organic matter of the vilest kinds, with the animalcules which are its scavengers, in the water itself. He may reasonably expect to be poisoned with his wines and liquors; but he is unsuspicious that he is eating lard in his butter, alum in his bread, disgusting parasites, flour, and gypsum in his sugar, meal in his mustard, turmeric in his ginger, sulphuric acid in his vinegar, lead in his cay enne, copper in his pickles, gelatine in his isinglass, potato starch in his arrowroot, and many mineral poisons in bonbons and confectionery, - or that his potted meats may be made of horse-flesh, his tea of used leaves revamped, his cigar falsi fied, and his cocoa adulterated with meal and flour.

This is literal truth. Nothing, we may say, in the whole domain of Nature, has escaped this universal contamination. The voluminous pages of Mr. Hassall's fearful work teem with proof that nothing is too small, nothing too cheap, nothing too common, familiar, or indispensable, not only to comfort, but to existence itself, to be spared from fraud. Nay more, adulter ation is re-adulterated: coffee is adulterated with the cheaper chiccory, and chiccory itself with still cheaper roasted corn. The adulterer is himself defrauded by a still more cunning swindler; and while he is picking his customer's pocket, in fancied security, some other knave is deep in his own.

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